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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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LETTEES 



ADDRESSED TO 



Col Robert 6. Ingersoll: 



OR, 



INFIDELITY REBUKED AND 
TRUTH VICTORIOUS. 



BY 



AJLFRED NEVIN, 1>.I>. 9 LL. 3D., 

Author of "Nevitfs Popular Commentary" " Voice of God, 11 etc. 



WTASHlH^; ' 



P. W. ZIEGLER & CO., 

PHILADELPHIA AND CHICAGO. 



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ss*- 



Copyright by P. W. Ziegler & Co., 1882. 



FERGUSON BROS. & CO., 

PRINTERS AND ELECTROTYPERS, 

PHILADELPHIA. 



" The only argument against the Bible is a bad heart." 

John, Earl of Rochester. 

"Man is bad enough with Christianity; he would be 
far worse without it ; therefore do not unchain the tiger." 
Benjamin Franklin, in his letter to Tom Paine. 

" The book — this mighty book— on every line 
Marked with the seal of high divinity : 
On every leaf bedewed with drops of love 
Divine, and with eternal heraldry 
And signature of God Almighty stamped 
Prom first to last." 

Pollock. 



(3) 



TO COL ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 

<«•► 

FIRST LETTER. 

Sir : You will not, I am sure, expect from me any 
apology for addressing you on this subject. Your 
frequent and furious attacks of the Holy Scriptures on 
the public platform have placed you in the front of 
their boldest and bitterest opponents. As reported in 
the press, you have not hesitated even to sneer at the 
Bible, and unqualifiedly denounce it as a fable and a 
fraud. It could not reasonably be expected that those 
who regard the volume as the citadel of their faith 
and hope should remain silent under these violent and 
vicious onslaughts upon it. I propose, therefore, as a 
believer and minister of the truth which you repudiate, 
with as much thoroughness as necessarily condensed 
discussion will allow, to offer for your calm and candid 
consideration a few thoughts in favor of the super- 
human origin of the grand old Book — the Book of 
our Redeemer's gift and our fathers' faith. 

I assume that you are not an atheist. The oaths 
which you have taken at your induction into public 
office clearly warrant this assumption. Surely, as an 
honest and honorable man, you would not have pre- 
tended to take upon you a religious obligation when 
you regarded such a ceremony as a farce, God a figment, 

(5) 



6 INFIDELITY KEBUKED. 

responsibility a dream and death an eternal sleep. 
Such duplicity, as you well know, would justly damage 
your character as a public functionary no less than as 
a teacher of duty. Besides, faith in God is so inherent 
in the heart of humanity and so essential to our reason 
that many wise and good men have doubted if ever 
there lived an intelligent mortal so absolutely destitute 
of religious belief as is implied in being an atheist* 
Addison would have told a man who gloried in this 
distinction that he was an impudent liar, and that he 
knew it. Bacon accounted atheism to be rather in the 
lip than in the heart. Dr. Arnold "believed consci- 
entious atheism not to exist." I concur in the senti- 
ment of these eminent men, and have too much respect 
for your intellect to believe that you have struggled 
away from the truth which comes to us in the shape 
of an intuition, and are floundering in the deep, dark, 
desolate and freezing vacuum through which rolls the 
doleful and dreadful, not to say devilish, cry of its 
occupants : " There is no God." 

THE WORLD WITHOUT THE BIBLE. 

Diderot, dying after a life of doubt and disap- 
pointment, said to friends that stood by his couch to 
close his eyes in the last sleep : "lam about to take 
a leap in the dark." So must every one say in the 
final hour if the Bible is a fiction or a myth. If this 
Book is not from God this world has never heard a 
word from Him. All through the ages which have 
rolled away, with their varied and vexed experience, 
struggling aspirations, anxious fears and earnest inqui- 
ries as to the past, the present and the future, He has 
remained dumb and silent; has dropped no sentence 



FIRST LETTER. 7 

or syllable out of heaven, has performed no act, has 
given no sign that He has ever had a thought concerning 
His human creation since the day He finished it. 
There He has sat and heard the human cries and sobs, 
and even the tragic histories of those who have plunged 
into the shoreless floods of the dark and untried waters, 
and never unfolded a banner or erected a beacon light. 
Hence we are shut up to the "Bible or nothing," 

Tremendous alternative ! Let the Bible be ignored 
and existence becomes the darkest of enigmas and the 
direst of calamities. To man, in his bewilderment, 
discontent, and longings without aim or warrant, the 
grazing brutes of the forest or field become objects of 
envy. Heaven is unpeopled ; its doors are forever 
barred against our wretched race, and the fatal sting 
is restored to the king of terrors ; death, instead of 
being to ourselves or to our beloved dead an uplifting 
of everlasting doors and an enfolding in everlasting 
arms, becomes an enemy as appalling to the reason as 
to the senses ; the usher to a charnel-house, where 
highest faculties and noblest feelings lie crushed with 
the animal wreck ; an infinite tragedy, maddening, 
soul-sickening — a " blackness of darkness forever." 

"We have, as has been well said, only to think what 
a change would pass on the aspect of our race if the 
Bible were suddenly withdrawn and all remembrance 
of it swept away, in order to arrive at some faint notion 
of the worth of the volume. Let it be removed, and 
with it must go the moral chart by which alone earth's 
population can be guided. Ignorant of the nature of 
God, and only guessing at their own immortality, the 
tens of thousands would be as mariners tossed on a 
wide ocean, without a pole-star and without a compass. 



8 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

The blue lights of the storm fiend would burn ever in 
the shrouds, and when the tornado of death rushed 
across the waters there would be heard nothing but 
the shrieks of the terrified and the groans of the 
despairing. It were to mantle the earth with a more 
than Egyptian darkness ; it were to dry up the foun- 
tains of human happiness; it were to take the tides 
from our waters and leave them stagnant, and the 
stars from our heavens and leave them in sackcloth, 
and the verdure from our valleys and leave them in 
barrenness ; it were to make the present all recklessness 
and the future all hopelessness, the maniac's revelry 
and then the fiend's imprisonment, if that precious 
volume could be annihilated which tells us of God and 
of Christ, unveils immortality, instructs in duty and 
wooes to glory. 

REVELATION A POSTULATE OF HUMAN NATURE. 

Beyond all question, Sir, revelation is a postulate 
of human nature. What am I? Whence am I? 
Whither am I bound? Why am I here? What rela- 
tion has my here to my hereafter? These and kindred 
queries rise clamorous and pressing upon the soul. 
There comes up from the earliest ages that have left 
us their record the cry of the inquiring, longing spirit : 
" O, that I knew where I might find Him, and how 
shall I order my ways before Him? If a man die, 
shall he live again ? " Especially is the grand question 
on which hinges human destiny — " How can a man 
be just with God?" — wrapt in profoundest obscurity. 
Natural religion does not answer it. " In nature, in 
God's creation," says Professor Silliman, " we discover 
only laws — laws of undeviating strictness, and sore 



FIRST LETTER. 9 

penalties attached to their violations. There is asso- 
ciated with natural laws no system of mercy. That 
dispensation is not revealed in nature, and is contained 
in the Scriptures alone." 

The world over there has been a deep-seated thought 
of a revelation as necessary to make known man's 
origin, duty and destiny. The philosophers of classic 
antiquity were represented by Plato when, in addressing 
Socrates, he said : " We ought, therefore, by all means, 
to do one of these two things — either by hearkening to 
instruction and by our own diligent study to find out 
the truth, or, if this be impossible, then to fix upon 
that which to human reason appears best and most 
probable, and to make this our raft while we sail 
through life, unless we could have a more sure and safe 
conveyance, such as some Divine communication ivould 
be." We see the universal appetency for revelation in 
the ready faith with which sacred books, oracles and 
prophets have always been received; in the eager vo- 
taries which " Spiritualism" draws around it, and in 
the testimony of Christian missionaries in earlier and 
later times that, while they have often encountered 
insuperable obstacles, they never met with antecedent 
scepticism as to the fact of a revelation. 

Can it, then, be believed that, with such a universal 
need, desire and expectation of a revelation of God's 
will, none has been given ? Can it be that He has 
furnished light for the eye, sound for the ear, fragrance 
and food for their respective organs, and a supply for 
every rightful demand that rises in our nature but 
this highest, deepest, most momentous want of the soul? 
Has He who preserves man and beast, feeds the young 
ravens when they cry, and hears the lions', whelps when 



10 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

they call for nourishment, forsaken His noblest, great- 
est work, precisely at that point where it was most 
important that the law of supply existing below it 
should continue to act? Has He left His crowning 
creature in the crowning purpose and need of his exist- 
ence as the ostrich leaves her egg in the lone and 
trackless desert, without parental oversight and bereft 
of parental supply? No! The deepest instincts of 
our nature, the widest generalizations of our experience 
and the calmest conjectures of our reason unite in 
saying it cannot be — God must have spoken. 

WHY DO INFIDELS ASSAULT ONLY THE BIBLE? 

I should like just here, Sir, to call your attention to 
the fact that modern infidels and scientists do not 
assault the Koran or the Yedas as they do the Bible. 
Why do they pursue this course? Undoubtedly it is 
because, in their judgment, the former are weak, 
awaken distrust, repel the enlightened and cultivated, 
and fall to the ground by their own feebleness; whilst 
the latter has in it moral and spiritual power — power 
enough to command assent, to rule the conscience and 
inspire the devotion of the noblest and most intelligent 
men of our own age, as it has done in every previous 
age since the Christian era. Hence their opposition, 
and in it it is not difficult to see a concession to the 
grand superiority of Christianity ; all the more potent 
because not intended. * 

GREAT MEN'S OPINIONS OF THE BIBLE. 

But, passing this point, let me remind you of the 
great men who have accepted and indorsed the Bible as 
the revelation God has made of His character and will. 



FIRST LETTER. 11 

Among these are Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Bacon, Lord 
Chief-Justice Hale, Hon. Robert Boyle, John Locke, 
Sir William Jones, John Selden, Thomas Lord Ers- 
kine, Joseph Addison, Wilberforce, Franklin, Johnson, 
Bonaparte, Sir Walter Scott, Patrick Henry, John 
Quincy Adams, Chancellor Kent, Guizot, Daniel 
Webster, Chief-Justice Gibson. It would be easy to 
extend the list, almost indefinitely, by such names as 
those of Grotius, Leibnitz, Washington, Blackstone, 
Mansfield, Marshall, Story, Sydenham, Boerhave, 
Gregory, Cooper, Milton, Butler, Brewster; but 
enough have been given to show that the Bible has 
met with success in high quarters. It has commended 
itself to the widest understanding, the most accurate 
and extensive culture, the most careful and exhaustive 
investigation, and withal the most pure and exalted 
character. It has even been eulogized by infidels them- 
selves. Lord Bolingbroke declared that " the Gospel 
is in all cases one continued lesson of the strictest 
morality, of justice, of benevolence and of universal 
charity." Rousseau said : " This Divine Book, the 
only one which is indispensable to the Christian, need 
only to be read with reflection to inspire love for its 
author and the most ardent desire to obey its precepts." 
And Huxley himself makes this acknowledgment: 
"Take the Bible as a whole, make the severest deduc- 
tions which fair criticism can dictate, . . . and there 
still remains in this old literature a vast residuum of 
moral beauty and grandeur." 

Is it not hard to conceive why such a Book should, 
from any good motive, be condemned and opposed ? 
Must not its assailant have marvellous confidence in 
his own ability? And must he not, in his moments 



12 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

of sober reflection, feel that he is, to say the very 
least, acting most unreasonably in making a volume 
that has received such approval and indorsement the 
object of low witticisms, scurrilous ridicule and horrible 
blasphemy ? 



SECOND LETTER. 

Sir : The first problem I present for solution, on 
your theory, is the unity of the Bible. 

The volume contains, in all, sixty-six books, from 
the pens of forty different writers, men of every sort 
of temperament, every degree of cultivation, and 
every variety of order — priests, as Ezra ; poets, as 
Solomon ; prophets, as Isaiah • kings, as David ; herds- 
men, as Amos; statesmen, as Daniel; scholars, as 
Moses, Luke and Paul ; fishermen, " unlearned and 
ignorant men," as Peter and John. They were written 
in very different forms — in history, biography, parable, 
letters, proverbs, poems, speeches — and amidst the 
strangest diversity of place and condition — in the 
centre of Asia, among the sands and cliffs of Arabia, 
the fields and hills of Palestine, in the courts of the 
Jewish Temple, in the schools of the prophets at Bethel 
and Jericho, in the palace of Shushan, on the idolatrous 
banks of Chebar, in the dungeons of Rome, and one of 
them in a lonely island of the iEgean Sea. They were 
written in very different circumstances — in various 
phases of joy, of sorrow, of affliction and of tribulation 
— and in very distant periods — the first author, Moses, 
having lived 400 years before the siege of Troy and 
900 years before the most ancient sages — Thales, 
Pythagoras and Confucius — and the last, John, more 
than 1500 years later than Moses, The compilation 

(13) 



14 INFIDELITY KEBUKED. 

of these writings, moreover, was not included in tlie 
intention of their several authors. These wrote as they 
were moved to write, under the pressure of the circum- 
stances that surrounded them, in some cases to meet 
special exigences, in all cases for the particular benefit 
of those to whom their compositions were delivered. 
In the growth of the Bible the Providential design 
outran the thoughts and purposes of the individual 
writers. 

THE BIBLE'S SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE. 

Now, Sir, in looking at this Book, with its two great 
divisions — the Mosaic economy and the Christian — 
what do we find it to be? It is manifestly pervaded 
by unity. It has, to the fullest extent, that necessary 
condition of any book which is to make a deep 
impression upon the minds and hearts of men — single- 
ness of piwpose, and that purpose kept in view through- 
out every page. The Old and the New Testaments 
are undeniably but different transcripts of the great and 
glorious original. The one is a lock with wards and 
interstices, and the other is the exquisitely-cut key, 
which completely unlocks it, and opens a door of 
entrance to the bright vision of light and immortality. 
The one is the portrait seen by moonlight, the other is 
the same portrait seen by sunlight — the one hazy and 
dim, but still real; the other bright and illuminated, 
like a noonday landscape, on which the minutest and 
most majestic features may be read and understood by 
him that runs while he reads. 

Thus the Book that was written by persons of so 
widely variant professions, circumstances, idiosyncrasies 
and trials, and so far separated in distance and time, is 
always consistent with itself. It is not a fanciful, 



SECOND LETTER. 15 

accidental or forced congeries of documents, but a nor- 
mal development and growth. Truth is the great and 
only instrumentality which it makes use of in order to 
transform, purify and elevate the human character. 
No matter how its variously gifted writers teach — 
whether by history, biography, song, allegory, parable, 
argument or dogmatic testimony and affirmation — 
religious truth forms the great and essential element in 
all their instructions. They all have the same end in 
view; all are pointing to the same object; all without 
any projected collusion, are advancing the same scheme; 
each brings in his several contingent without any 
apparent consideration how T it may unite with the por- 
tions brought by other contributors, without any spirit 
of accommodation, without any visible intention to 
make out a case, without indeed any actual resemblance 
more than that every separate portion being derived 
from the same spring, each must be governed by one 
common principle. These men may be compared to a 
band of musicians playing a grand anthem without 
previous practice, or to a number of laborers and 
masons, who, having no idea of the completed appear- 
ance of the edifice on which they are employed, Jay 
stone upon stone in blind obedience to the directing 
architect until the whole stands forth in sublimity and 
perfection. The Book which they wrote is evidently 
a ichole ; it has a beginning, a middle and an end; it 
is the realization of one mind executed by a number 
of others. The same spirit and feeling pervade the 
volume. Its ceremonies and dispensations arise natur- 
ally from one another. The same golden thread is to 
be seen running through all its pages. The com- 
parison of the first few chapters of Genesis with the 



16 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

closing chapters of the Bible shows us the same great 
ideas reappearing. In the first we have the heavens 
and the earth, and in the last the new heavens and 
new earth. In the one we have the paradise of Eden ; 
in the other, the paradise of God. In the one we are 
told of the rivers of Eden, and the Tree of Life " in 
the midst of the garden ; " in .the other we are told of 
the Eiver of the water of Life, and the Tree of Life 
upcn its banks, and "in the midst of the Paradise of 
God." At the beginning of the Bible we have the 
institution of marriage, and at the end we have " the 
marriage supper of the Lamb." 



Look at some more definite evidence of the unity 
which we affirm. Of the great facts narrated in the 
Scriptures the sacred writers have furnished a perfectly 
harmonious account. The earliest of them wrote at a 
later time than some of these events, some of them 
VTote after the occurrence of them all, while most of 
those who wrote subsequently to all, or a part of them, 
make frequent and explicit reference to the whole. 
Whether their statements be more or less full, or their 
references more or less incidental, there is no positive 
discrepancy between them. David celebrates in poetry 
what Moses records as a historian, while Stephen, 
Peter and Paul urge in argument the same facts that 
are recorded by the historian's pen and sung by the 
prophet's lyre. The' historical parts of the New Tes- 
tament, as well as of the Old, are in perfect coincidence 
with the more didactic and doctrinal parts. The 
Epistles of Paul — so full of minute specifications, so 
replete with allusions to times, places, persons and 



SECOND LETTER. 17 

events, and written with all the freedom of epistolary 
correspondence, and without any regard to the order 
of events — are found to indicate a minute coincidence 
with the more extended and exact history given by 
Luke in the "Acts of the Apostles." So with the four 
Evangelists. There is, indeed, a difference in their 
narratives, but they differ without being contradictory. 
One gives a more full account than another; one 
writes in chronological order; another interweaves 
facts as they suit his purpose and without regard to 
date ; one writes to a different people and with a dif- 
ferent object from another, and therefore presents the 
facts with a different phase and complexion. Still 
their statements, though at a great remove from studied 
uniformity, are characterized by entire oneness. The 
doctrines, too, which the volume inculcates all agree 
with each other. They have a mutual dependence 
and connection ; they give one another a reciprocal 
support and influence; they grow out of each other 
and all hang together, alike deriving their ripeness, 
freshness and flavor from the same parent stock. Let 
a diligent student take up a copy of the Scriptures 
with copious marginal references and undertake to 
collate their instructions upon any one doctrine or 
moral duty, and he will be surprised at the uniformity 
of their teaching. They never speak for and against 
the same doctrine; they never bear witness on both 
sides of any question ; nor is there an instance in which 
they affirm and deny the same thing. That which in 
reality has any Scripture in its iavor has all Scripture 
in its favor. 
2 



18 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT ARE ONE. 

The same thing, Sir, as already hinted, may be predi- 
cated in relation to the harmony existing between the 
Old and the New Testament. They are but different 
parts of the same system. The one necessitated the 
other. Judaism was the stalk, gradually growing and 
strengthening, on which the flower of Christianity, in 
"the fulness of time/ 7 exhibited its bud, unfolded its 
leaves, and diffused its life-giving fragrance. The one 
was the dawn ; the other is the noon. The one was 
the child ; the other is the man. The one was the 
sapling; the other is the ripe cedar of Lebanon out of 
which temples are made. The records of both are the 
same in authority, substance and mode of communi- 
cation. The same truth, only not with the same 
fulness and clearness, was conveyed in " sundry times" 
and " divers manners " by the Prophets, which was 
made known by the Eternal Word when "He was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us." 

The sacred penmen of both economies all struck one 
grand key-note — Christ and Him crucified. As in 
Beethoven's matchless music there runs one idea, 
worked out through all the changes of measure and of 
key — now almost hidden, now breaking out in rich, 
natural melody, whispered in the treble, murmured in 
the bass, dimly suggested in the prelude, but growing 
clearer and clearer as the work proceeds, winding grad- 
ually back until it ends in the key in which it began 
and closes in triumphant harmony — so throughout the 
whole Bible there runs one grand idea — man's ruin by 
sin and his redemption by grace; in a word, Jesus 
Christ, the Saviour. From the dim promise at the 
fall, to the "Lamb in the midst of the throne," which 



SECOND LETTER. 19 

the apostle saw from the rocky and barren isle, Jesus 
is set forth as the burden of the promises, the medium 
of blessings and the object of saving faith. 

We might further argue the unity of the Bible from 
a certain tone and manner which generally pervade its 
writers, and which are not found in the same degree 
in any other, as also from a certain resemblance of style, 
which, however undeniable the differences that dis- 
criminate the various authors and attest their individ- 
uality, is perceptible in the compositions of Scripture 
in general, — a diapason which runs through all its 
complex strain of harmony. It is heard as the surge 
of ocean is heard above the many-voiced winds which 
sweep over its surface. 

HOW IS THIS UNITY TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR? 

How, I ask you, shall we account for this unity of 
the Bible ? Remember what kind of unity it is. It 
is not, as has well been said, that apparent unity which 
might be produced by a language common to all its 
parts, for the deepest possible gulf divides the lan- 
guages in which the Old and New Testament were 
written. Neither is it an unity produced by likeness of 
form, for the forms, as we have already seen, are various 
and diverse as can be imagined ; now song, now history, 
now dialogue, now narrative, now familiar letter, now 
prophetic vision. Neither is it a unity such as might 
arise from all parts of the Book being the upgrowth 
of a single age, and so all breathing alike the spirit of 
that age, for, as we have also seen, no single age be- 
held the birth of this Book, which was well nigh two 
thousand years ere it was fully formed and had reached 
its final completion. Nor yet can this unity be ac- 



20 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

counted for from the Book having one class of men for 
its human authors, since, as previously stated, men not 
of one class alone, but of many, and those the widest 
apart — kings and herdsmen, warriors and fishermen, 
wise men and simple — were employed in writing it. 
The truth is, that deeper than all these outward cir- 
cumstances, and in sjnte of them all, does the unity of 
the Scriptures lie, since all these circumstances, in 
their natural operation, would have tended to an op- 
posite result. 

IMPOSTURE IMPOSSIBLE. 

Suppose, Sir, the Bible to be blotted out of existence, 
and some forty or fifty persons scattered through dif- 
ferent ages of the world had undertaken to write on 
religious subjects, and their works were comprised in a 
volume. Who does not see that such a work would 
have been the merest theological jargon ? Let the 
wild and incoherent speculations of heathen philosophy 
and the thousand varieties of pagan religion give the 
answer to this demand. Who does not see also that 
as soon might men of understanding be induced to 
climb to the stars as to hope that a new religion, thus 
conceived and constructed at random, could, as Chris- 
tianity has done, by the force of its own evidence, win 
its way through the world, overthrowing every oppos- 
ing system, extend its triumphs, and finally establish 
itself in the most civilized nations in spite of the most 
learned, the most determined and the most powerful 
opposition ? 

It follows also in another view, from the unity of 
the Scriptures, that they had a divine origin. Who 
could conceive such a plan as they exhibit, slowly un- 
fold it part by part through the ages and bring it to- 



SECOND LETTER. 21 

gether finished in this Book but the "only wise God?" 
The idea of such a book being the work of imposture 
is simply absurd. If fraud was committed it must 
have been carried on for centuries. If the Bible, one 
in its various parts, be untruthful, there must have 
been a combination, not a knot of men at one particular 
juncture ; not of the members of a sect which flourished 
for a while, but of persons living in widely separated 
ages and in distant lands, of persons in all grades of 
society, with jarring interests and dissimilar objects, of 
hostile principles, Jews and Christians, opposed in 
everything else but accordant in this — to palm upon 
the world as facts events which never happened, annals 
lifelike but of no authority, chronicles of kings, ac- 
counts of revolutions and religions, testified to by all 
of them, but yet baseless and imaginary. There must 
have been, moreover, bad men who never saw each 
other, uniting to frame a system of truth which has 
proved the world's greatest blessing, and which they 
severally knew to be false. Such a combination the 
world has never heard of, and none can believe that it 
ever existed except those who hate the truth and prefer 
being " wilfully ignorant." 

" Whence but from Heaven could men unskilled in arts, 
Tn several ages born, in several parts, 
Weave such agreeing truths ? Or how, or why, 
Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie ? 
Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice, 
Starving their gain and martyrdom their price ? " 

Again, the unity of the Bible is a guarantee of the 
preservation of its integrity. There may be minute 
errors in making copies of so many writings, for the 
hand of the scribe is not inspired ; there may be a w r ord 



22 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

dropped out, or a vowel omitted in one passage or an- 
other, but the great course of doctrine cannot be elimi- 
nated from the Scripture unless the whole fabric be 
torn into tatters. It is, says an able writer, interwoven, 
every part with every other, story, law, precept, par- 
able, the biographies of Christ by the Evangelists, and 
the argument of Christ by the Apostles, until, if one 
part be thrown away, many others must also and 
equally be thrown away. The records are so inter- 
braided that one cannot be extracted and the rest left, 
with any ingenuity or by any force. And here, by the 
way, important light is thrown upon the difficulties in 
the Biblical text, of which skeptics have made so much. 
Necessarily always, by the manifold constitution of the 
Scriptures, they must amount to very little. They are 
like scratches on the stones of the Milan Cathedral ; 
like the breaking of a single pane of its pictured glass, 
or the breaking off of a finger or, possibly, a forearm 
from one of its five thousand statues. The great struc- 
ture stands unimpaired, shining, imperial in the serene 
Italian air. The Bible stands majestic, unfractured, 
in the same way. God in His wisdom has made it so 
multiform, so many-sided and various in its parts, that 
it cannot be destroyed except by annihilating its whole 
structure. 



THIRD LETTER. 

Sir: From some men's silence more instruction can 
be derived than from other men's speech. Indeed it 
has become a proverb that it is evidence of wisdom to 
know when to keep quiet. 

" Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 

The sciolist, whose pride is as great as his ignorance, 
will express himself freely on subjects on which the 
profound scholar prefers to be mute. Many a lawyer 
has lost a cause by not submitting it without argument 
to the good sense of the jury. Many a physician has 
lost the confidence of the public by attempting too 
much, or by showing in his talk a want of power of 
diagnosis which seasonable taciturnity might have con- 
cealed. Many a man in entering a gallery of paint- 
ings or sculpture has betrayed his utter lack of aesthetic 
cultivation by a boisterous and pretentious manner, the 
very opposite of that subdued frame which such works 
of art always generate in those who have taste to appre- 
ciate them. How much better did the sacred writers 
understand the power of silence than do many who 
assail their productions ! 



The Bible has well been likened to a dial in which 
the shadow as well as the light informs us. We find 

(23) 



24 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

the assumption or silent recognition of God's existence 
at the beginning of the Book. Besides, instead of an 
attempt to explain the process of creation, we have a 
mere declaration of the great and important truth that 
all things had a beginning, that nothing throughout 
the wide extent of nature existed from eternity, orig- 
inated by chance or from the skill of any inferior agent; 
but that the whole universe was produced by the creative 
power of God. How wise was this, in comparison with 
what elaborate and tedious treatises on these subjects 
would have been ! The inspired penmen, with an art- 
lessness that could fear no suspicion, and with the can- 
dor which truth ever exhibits, as at once its ornament 
and evidence, tell us of what Noah, Abraham, Moses, 
David and Peter did that was wrong; that " he that 
thinketh he standeth may take heed lest he fall." But 
we never find them extolling themselves. They ex- 
hibit no vanity, egotism or ambition. Instead of trum- 
peting their own praise, or aiming to transmit their 
fame to posterity, several of them have not so much as 
put their names to their writings, and those who have 
are generally out of sight. As we read their history 
they seldom occur to our thoughts. Who thinks of the 
Evangelists when reading the four Gospels? 

These men do not attempt to remove any difficulty 
which they must have known their statements would 
have been likely to occasion to their readers. They do 
not make any effort to explain or get rid of any ap- 
parent discrepancy either in their own records or (if 
they knew any) in the records of one another. They 
bespeak no indulgence, as is the usual way of narrators 
of the marvellous, for the degree in which they tax the 
credulity of the world, nor deign to give any reason 



THIRD LETTER. 25 

why the things they narrate, however improbable, 
should be received. They are never carried away by 
any pomp of diction into any use of superlatives. They 
do not express more surprise at one miracle than an- 
other. Even in the accounts they give of the birth 
and crucifixion of Christ, where everything would have 
tempted to extravagance of statement, we have all that 
is most sober in the manner of the narration. In all 
cases they left circumstances as they had occurred to 
make their own impressions,. instead of adding to them 
any reflections of their own. Feeling that the ground 
was holy on which they stood, invariably did they pre- 
serve the gravity of history and the severity of truth, 
without enlarging the outline or swelling the expression. 

DOES NOT MINISTER TO CURIOSITY. 

Any one writing a book, Sir, that he wished to be 
very popular would be careful to do two things — or 
one of them. First, he would minister to human 
curiosity as much as was in his power. He would 
make himself acquainted with the numerous strange 
and speculative inquiries which men are ever ready to 
propose, and answer them. Or, if this could not be 
done, he would not touch any subject that he could 
not thoroughly handle and elucidate. But we find no 
such disposition on the part of God's amanuenses. 
How much is there we earnestly long to understand ! 
AVe would comprehend the origin of evil. We find 
scars upon the earth — sickly and wailing children, 
volcano and pestilence, tyranny and wrong — and, with 
intense anxiety, we ask : If God be God, and if He be 
love, and if He be pure, whence? why? how? So 
with other great problems, such as God's existence as 



26 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

Three in One, and One in Three, the union of the 
divine nature of Christ with the human in one person, 
and the reconcilableness of foreknowledge or predesti- 
nation with free agency and personal responsibility. 
Especially do we long to know all about the unseen 
world and its retributions. There is no reserve to 
which human nature less easily reconciles itself than 
this. We learn this from a glance at the fables of the 
Greek and Roman mythologies, or those of Oriental 
nations, and at the pages of the Koran. Even in the 
information which sober and temperate commentators 
are so ready to supply on this subject we see how 
greedily the human mind revels in speculations regard- 
ing the destinies of the future world. But on most of 
these themes the Bible is entirely silent, and on the 
most interesting of them all it does little more than tell 
us that heaven is the unveiling of that sun by whose 
unclouded light the Christian walks here, and that hell 
is the punishment — the dark shadow that waits on 
sin, to which it is bound by a terrible, an irrevocable 
necessity. And yet, whilst maintaining this reticence, 
the sacred writers do not shun a subject, though in 
presenting it clearly enough to be seen, and to answer 
all the practical purposes of life, they are to leave 
much of it in shadow. 

HOW THTS SILENCE IS TO BE EXPLAINED. 

How is this? How is it that whilst revelation has 
its high hills on which it pours the effulgence of its 
beams, it has also its valleys, chasms and blanks, on 
which, as we gaze, we can find no other vehicle for our 
feelings than the words to which an apostle himself was 
driven : "O, the depth !" Beyond a doubt there must 



THIRD LETTER. 27 

have been infallible, divine guidance given to the pen- 
men of the Scriptures, to teach and dispose them to 
stop in their revelation of truth precisely where they 
did, and where enlightened reason attests they should 
have stopped. " The light of revelation is adapted to 
the human understanding as natural light is to the 
eye, in a manner so remarkable as to indicate a higher 
wisdom as the author of both. False prophets never 
know where to stop. Mahomet and Sweden borg knew 
too much. But something seems to have laid a re- 
straint upon prophets and apostles, and to have sobered 
them in the midst of supernal revelations. They tell 
us enough for practical purposes, but nothing for 
merely imaginative or speculative uses. Everything 
here appears to be fitted to make this world a scene 
of discipline and moral education for us. Revelation 
is limited by the spiritual ends of a system of training 
and trial, and this adaptation evinces the thoughtful 
provision of the schoolmaster." 

In connection with what has been said of the evi- 
dence furnished by the Bible's silence of its divine 
origin, it is important to notice the epoch at which 
its growth ceased, and it became a finished book. It 
ends just when all the truth necessary to be revealed 
has been made known. So long as humanity was 
growing it grew; but when the manhood of our race 
was reached, when man had attained his highest point, 
even union with God in His Son, then it comes to a 
close. It carries him up to this, to his glorious goal — to 
the perfect knitting again of those broken relations, 
through the life and death and resurrection of Him in 
whom God and man were perfectly atoned. So long 
as there was anything more to tell, any new revelation 



28 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

of the name of God, any new relations of grace and 
nearness into which He was bringing His creatures — 
so long the Bible was a growing, expanding book ; but 
when all is given, when God, who at divers times 
spoke to the world by His servants, had now spoken 
His last and fullest word by His Son, then to this 
Book, the record of that Word of His, there is added 
no more, even while there is nothing more to add, 
though it cannot end until it has shown in prophetic 
vision how this latest and highest which now has been 
given to man, shall unfold itself into the glory and 
blessedness of a perfected Kingdom of Heaven. 

THE BIBLE'S AVOIDANCES. 

Let me ask you, Sir, now, to glance at the avoid- 
ances of the Bible. 

If a company of men unpractised in navigation 
should launch a vessel on a lake or ocean and shun 
every reef and shoal, so as to make their voyage in 
safety, no one would refuse them credit for their suc- 
cess. All the more, too, would their achievement 
challenge admiration if the waters on which they 
embarked had never been explored, if the art of sailing 
was in its infancy, and if instead of all hands starting 
together at the commencement of the voyage they had 
come aboard singly at different stages of the progress. 

It is easy to conceive that the sacred writers might 
have committed themselves to some theory of science 
or system of philosophy, in ignorance or error, so as 
to have been dislodged from their position by sub- 
sequent discoveries and developments. We can readily 
imagine that they had strong temptations to wander 
into the regions of physical and metaphysical disqui- 



THIRD LETTER. 29 

sition. From their intellectual peculiarities, indeed, 
as well as the disposition which false pretenders to 
revelation have shown to grasp everything in their 
alleged inspired capacity, there was an a priori proba- 
bility that they would yield themselves to speculations 
in the various departments of material and mental 
investigation. For instance, other so-called sacred 
books almost invariably miss the distinction between 
ethics and physics. Such a deep ground has this 
error, so willing are men to substitute the speculative 
for the practical, and to lose the last in the first, that 
we find even after the Christian faith had been given, 
a vast attempt to turn even that into a philosophy of 
nature. What, for example, was Manicheism but the 
attempt to array a philosophy of nature in a Christian 
language, to empty Christian truths of all their ethical 
worth, and then to use them as a gorgeous symbolic 
garb for clothing a system different to its very core? 

Do we find anything like this in the Bible? Not 
at all. It is no story of the material universe. A 
single chapter is sufficient to tell us that " God made 
the heavens and the earth. " Man is the central figure 
there, or, to speak more truly, the only figure — sun, 
moon and stars and all the visible creation borrowing: 
all their worth and their significance from the relations 
wherein they stand to him. And in this fact, by the 
way, we have an answer to a certain infidel who lately 
seemed to think that he had made a point against the 
Bible by remarking that the author of it had com- 
pressed the astronomy of the universe into five words. 
What ignorance this betrays ! In this very reticence 
in regard to astronomy we have a note of truth. If 
this work had been the work of some mere cosmogonist, 



30 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

some theorist as to the origin of the universe, he would 
have been sure to give us a great deal of information 
about the stars. But a prophet of the Lord has noth- 
ing to do with astronomy as such. All that he has to 
do with the stars is to make it dear that the most 
distant orbs of light are included in the domain of the 
Great Supreme, and this he can do as well in five 
words as in five thousand, and so, wisely avoiding all 
detail, he simply says : " He made the stars also." 

Here let us look at another avoidance in this direction. 
In Greek and Latin philosophy the heavens were a 
solid vault over the earth — a sphere studded with 
stars, as Aristotle called them. The sages of Egypt 
held that the world was formed by the motion of air 
and the upward course of flame ; Plato, that it was an 
intelligent being. Empedocles held that there were 
two suns : Zeucippus, that the stars were kindled by 
their motions, and that they nourished the sun with 
their fires. All Eastern nations believed that the 
heavenly bodies exercised a powerful influence over 
human affairs. In the Hindoo philosophy the globe is 
represented as flat and triangular, composed of seven 
stories, the whole mass being sustained upon the heads 
of elephants, who, when they shake themselves, cause 
earthquakes. Mahomet taught that the mountains 
were created to prevent the earth from moving, and 
to hold it as by anchors and chains. 

THE BIBLE'S SPIRITUAL IDEA. 

How came it to pass. Sir, that, while every other 
system of idolatry may be overthrown by its false 
physics, not one of the forty writers of the Bible, most 
of whom lived in the vicinity of one or other of the 



THIRD LETTER. 31 

nations who held these views, has written a single line 
that favors them ? Most instructive are the avoidances 
of the inspired penmen. Nothing is plainer than that 
they have but one object in view — to restore fallen 
man to the favor and fellowship of his Maker, They 
show not even a willingness to turn aside to entertain, 
or even to instruct, except for a specific purpose. The 
region of psychology itself is entered by them only so 
faT as is necessary for the attainment of the object with 
which they feel themselves charged. From all they 
write it is manifest that they have, individually and 
without mutual consultation, "This one thing I do," for 
their motto. Always and everywhere they hold fast 
the spiritual idea. It runs through their records, as 
the blood, starting from a common centre, circulates 
through every portion of the human frame. They 
aimed to make men " wise unto salvation." There 
were storms of discussion raging around these devoted 
men, and there were billows of earnest inquiry meeting 
them at every point with tremendous force ; but they 
yielded to neither. They kept the vessel committed 
to their care moving steadily on, showing that no 
wind could divert it from its chosen channel, nor any 
wave harm it by concussion, and that, with all their 
acknowledged inexperience and apparent weakness, 
they felt conscious of ability to defy every peril. They 
entered into no entangling alliances. All history 
shows how easy it is for religious to pass into political 
zeal or coalesce with it, especially where men are 
suffering under oppression and persecution. Hardly 
had Luther entered on his career than he was troubled 
with the fanaticism of Carlstadt, and soon after by far 
worse fanatics, who would have turned the Refor- 



32 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

mation into an instrument of political revolution, and 
thereby gravely imperilled his enterprise. But the 
Evangelists and Apostles aimed at no political ends 
nor identified themselves with any political party. 
They lived and moved in a higher and holier atmos- 
phere. They sought to reclaim the world to God. 
Their hands had found something to do, and they 
were determined to do it. They felt themselves to be 
engaged in the greatest and grandest of all works, and 
would not come down to foreign and feebler pursuits. 

Of the great political changes which passed over the 
ancient world, indeed, the Bible scarcely even takes 
notice. In regard to them, as has been said, it is 
almost as silent and unconcerned as sun and stars when 
they look down upon the tumult and noise of man's 
battle-fields. We hear, as it were, the sound, but it is 
as the ocean on a distant shore. The intrigues of 
courts, the career and achievements of great conquerors, 
the thrilling events which marked the extinction or 
transfer of political power and civilization, the great 
battles which shook the world — in a word, all those 
things over which the imagination of the ordinary his- 
torian lingers with such intense emotion — are touched 
only as they happen to traverse the religious history 
of the strange community whose destinies the Bible is 
tracing, or those ulterior designs of which this peo- 
ple were to be the unconscious instruments to the 
world. 

NO RESENTMENT SHOWN BY THE SACRED WRITERS. 

The most careless reader of the Bible must have 
observed that its writers avoided all resentment. 
Under all the opposition and persecution with which 



THIRD LETTER. 33 

they met, even in view of the cruel wrongs done to 
Him whom they called their Master in a far higher 
sense than any party or sect ever called its founder 
such, they show none of this feeling. Not even His 
sufferings, not even His death, could inoculate them 
with the spirit which is universal in the world, and 
which, where innocence has to be vindicated and great 
iniquities to be denounced, is by many regarded not 
simply as excusable, but meritorious. " The facts, 
indeed, which they profess to relate (dramatically 
exhibited after the usual manner of Scripture) deter- 
mine the moral character of those they describe as 
agents, but there is no word of indiguation or invective 
such as is the infallible resort of parties in conflict. 
They call no names, make no clamorous reproaches, 
indulge neither in curses nor querulous objurgation. 
Pilate, for example, is represented as afraid of the 
people, and it is about the worst they have to say of 
him." 

GRAVITY OF THE SACRED WRITERS. 

Some lecturers against Christianity indulge in 
strains of levity. They strive to produce merriment 
and laughter. Even when dealing with themes "high 
as heaven, and deep as hell" in their importance, their 
great aim seems to be to " bring down the house." 
"We find no such spirit in the inspired penmen. Paul's, 
and Peter's, and Stephen's appeals and addresses are 
not interlarded with announcements of "tremendous 
cheering," " great applause," " the audience was con- 
vulsed with laughter." The reason of this is obvious 
to any one having a grain of common sense. Such a 
spirit would have been utterly unbecoming their great 
3 



34 INFIDELITY KEBUKED. 

commission to save perishing men. They felt, as all 
sensible persons feel, that the airy tones of wit and 
humor in preparing a book for human salvation would 
be as unnatural as a jocular vein in a judge on the 
bench of criminal justice, or a physician by the bedside 
of patients in their mortal agony. 



FOURTH LETTER. 

Sir : In one of your lectures, as I have observed, 
you maintained that, as the Bible gives accounts of 
immoral actions, it is of an immoral tendency. But 
how untenable, not to say ridiculous, is such an in- 
ference! 

A schoolboy ought to know that the Book could not 
have given a faithful portraiture of human nature 
without having recorded such actions. Do we say that 
the mirror is impure and false because it exhibits the 
distorted features and the crooked frame of some un- 
happy cripple who may gaze upon it? Not at all. 
The mirror is pure, the glass is true, but the object re- 
flected happens to be ugly and deformed ; hence the 
deformity is not in the glass but in the subject it repre- 
sents. Besides, it is one thing for a man when sitting 
down to write a book which is to contain narratives 
of depravity to so construct and embellish them as to 
make them palatable to our corrupt nature ; but it is 
an entirely different thing for a man to describe, as the 
sacred writers do, the depravity of human nature with 
a view to deterring men from practising it. 

Instead, therefore, of the fact that the Bible records 
for our admonition the failings and vices of some of 
the leading characters in it being an argument against 
the Book, it is evidence of its inspired character. Had 
the Scriptures been written by cunning impostors 

(35) 



36 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

such acknowledgments of crimes and frailties in their 
most distinguished characters, and even in some of 
the writers themselves, would clearly not have been 
made. 

Here it is proper to say that, notwithstanding the 
sad exceptions which are to be found in the character 
of some of the persons whom the Old Testament re- 
cognizes as good — such as Rahab, Samson and Gideon 
— their goodness is not to be denied. If we contrast 
them with the Evangelist John, it is enough to say 
that they did not live in the light of the Gospel. We 
do not, as has well been said, expect men to see as well 
at midnight as at noonday. At a period of barbarism 
and wild anarchy they had a faith in the Invisible, and 
a fidelity induced by it which have an imperishable 
worth. They espoused the right side in a conflict on 
the issue of which was staked the weal of all future 
generations. The historic movement which they, often 
in a rough way, but at the cost of peril and sacrifice, 
helped forward, was in the right direction. Men must 
be judged in relation to their times. There are paint- 
ings produced in the infancy of Art which elicit sym- 
pathy for the intent out of which they spring, and 
for the sentiment beneath them which struggles for 
expression, though the materials are crude and the 
execution very imperfect. Thus it is with the moral 
and religious element that shines out even in the dark 
ages of Hebrew history. The general aim may be right 
when the means chosen to reach it are the fruit of an 
uneducated moral sense. We must approach these 
ancient records in a catholic spirit, and with the same 
historic sense that we apply in judging the mediaeval 
crusader or the soldiers of Cromwell. 



FOURTH LETTER. 37 

WE CAN ONLY JUDGE THE BIBLE BY THE BIBLE. 

It is important also to remember just at this point 
that it is to the Bible itself we owe our own power of 
judging the Bible. The hard places in the Old Testa- 
ment are revealed by the increasing light of the Bible 
itself. The Bible is its own commentary and correc- 
tive. When that which is perfect is come, that which 
is in part of itself falls away from the Divine law. 
"This very fact that we are able to judge the imper- 
fections of the Old Dispensation by a more advanced 
standard shows how effectually through all these ages 
of patient education the Spirit of Truth has pursued its 
work. The conclusive logic of facts shows that the 
Divine policy of revelation has been successful. The 
real morality of the Bible is its final morality — the 
morality in the intention of the Lawgiver from the be- 
ginning. The Divineness of the whole process is evi- 
dent from the very fact that it has taken place. Other 
nations ' ended as they began ;' no other ancient system 
of law and religion had in itself a principle of develop- 
ment, a constructive force, the power of passing on to 
perfection. In its very evolution we have a sign of the 
supernatural life in the religion of Israel. There is 
the continuity of a Divine purpose here." 

AVith these necessary preliminary remarks, let us, 
Sir, glance (which is all we deem necessary) at several 
of the moral difficulties of the Bible, regarding them 
as specimens of the whole. 

OFFERING OF ISAAC. 
As to the case of Abraham's offering of Isaac it is 
plain that God's design was not to secure a certain out- 
ward act, but a certain state of mind, a willingness to 



38 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

give np the beloved object to Jehovah. The principle 
of this great trial was the same which has been applied 
to God's servants in every age — whether they were 
willing to part with what they loved best on earth 
when God's service called for it. The direction, "Lay 
not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything 
unto him, for now I know that thou fearest God, see- 
ing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, 
from me," shows that satisfaction was rendered to the 
Lord's command when the spiritual sacrifice was com- 
pleted. 

Jacob's deception. 

None need stumble at the deception which Jacob 
practised upon Isaac, unless they prefer to do so. What 
was the result of this criminal act? Jacob was driven 
from his home; was himself robbed and defrauded by 
Laban ; the wife he despised became the mother of the 
chosen tribe, and in the deception of his own children 
he learned the grievousness of his sin. Above all, 
though the promise was ultimately fulfilled, Jacob him- 
self received no blessing from it. Instead of his 
mother's son bowing down before him, he, in his own 
person, bowed down before his mother's son, and at the 
close of his life he was dependent upon his children. 
To this add all the mournful episode of Joseph's exile, 
Dinah's dishonor, and his other domestic trials, and 
there is no difficulty in seeing that the punishment was 
complete, as is the lesson also. 

PROPHETESS DEBORAH. 

In reference to the Prophetess Deborah's approval 
of the conduct of Jael in treacherously slaying Sisera, 
whom she had decoyed into her tent, there has been 



FOURTH LETTER. 39 

great complaint by infidels. But why should there 
be? The motive of the act was a high and unselfish 
one. The deed which sprung from it was wrong, 
though ignorantly done. If we can overlook the 
treachery and violence which belonged to the morals 
of the age and country, and bear in mind Jael's ardent 
sympathies with the oppressed people of God, her faith 
in the right of Israel to possess the land in which they 
were now slaves, her zeal for the glory of Jehovah as 
against the gods of Canaan, and the heroic courage and 
firmness with which she executed her deadly purpose, 
we shall be ready to yield her the praise which is her 
due. Deborah speaks of Jael's deed by the light of 
her own age, which did not make so manifest the evil 
of guile and bloodshed as the light in ours does. 
What shall be said in the light of the Gospel of De- 
borah's applause of Jael? It is merited if applied to 
the motive; it is misplaced when directed to the act. 

THE SINS OF FATHERS VISITED UPON THE CHILDREN. 

Objection has been made to the visiting of the in- 
iquity of the fathers upon the children, in the second 
commandment of the Decalogue. Some consider this 
threatening as peculiar to the Jews, who were placed 
under a dispensation of temporal rewards and punish- 
ments, and understand it to import that under such a 
dispensation, by the overruling providence of God, a 
man's family would be placed in such circumstances as 
would accord with his conduct, or that their degrada- 
tion and suffering would be the effect of his sins. "A 
nobleman," says Dr. dimming, "rebels against his 
prince, he loses his coronet, and his family suffers for 
centuries afterward. A father, through gambling, 



40 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

loses all his property, and his children and his chil- 
dren's children suffer. A parent becomes a drunkard 
and a debauchee, wastes his health and injures his con- 
stitution, and his offspring are diseased to the third 
and fourth generation. Now, what is all this but the 
sins of the fathers visited upon the children in the ar- 
rangements of a Providence we can see, and in occur- 
rences of daily life? 

jephthah's vow. 

As to Jephthah's supposed sacrifice of his daughter, 
it may be said : First. It cannot be proved that he did 
offer her as a burnt-offering. The Bible does not say 
that he did this. If, through ignorance and a mis- 
guided fanaticism, he actually committed the cruel 
deed, it does not appear that God in any manner sanc- 
tioned it. Secondly. There are good reasons for hold- 
ing, with the most eminent critics, that, instead of be- 
ing offered as a burnt sacrifice, she was simply devoted 
to perpetual celibacy in the service of the tabernacle. 
1. The literal sacrifice of human beings was strictly 
forbidden in the Mosaic law, and Jephthah was doubtless 
fully aware of this fact. 2. The Hebrew of Jephthah's 
vow may be correctly translated : "Shall surely be the 
Lord's or (some eminent scholars prefer and), I will 
offer it up for a burnt-offering." Either of these trans- 
lations removes the difficulty. 3. During the " two 
months " which intervened between Jephthah's return 
and the supposed sacrifice, it is scarcely credible that 
the priests would not have interfered to prevent 
the barbarous deed, or that Jephthah himself would 
not have " inquired of the Lord " respecting a release 
from his vow. 4. As she was Jephthah's only child, 



FOURTH LETTER. 41 

to devote her to perpetual virginity would preclude 
him from all hope of posterity, in the estimation of a 
Jew a most humiliating and calamitous deprivation. 5. 
The phraseology of verses 37-40 points clearly to a 
life of perpetual and enforced celibacy. On any other 
hypothesis the language seems irrelevant and unmean- 
ing. Manifestly, completeness of consecration as a 
spiritual sacrifice was the pervading idea in the case of 
Jephthah's sacrifice. 

DAVID. 

In relation to David, infidelity has asked with a flush 
of triumph, How is it that he is represented as "a man 
after God's own heart," and that his heart is said to 
have been "perfect with the Lord his God?" But 
it is well to remember that the former commenda- 
tion refers to him early in life, before he had fallen into 
those great sins which cast such a shadow upon his ad- 
ministration, and that the latter is not absolute, but 
comparative, merely indicating a man whom God will 
approve in distinction from Saul, who was rejected. 
Neither should it be forgotten that David's repentance 
was as deep and thorough as his sins were flagrant and 
aggravated, and that his iniquity was visited with sore 
punishment, his favorite son Absalom rising up in re- 
bellion against him, driving him from his throne and 
capital, involving his people in the horrors of civil war, 
and, in pursuit of his detestable policy, visiting on his 
father, and " in the face of the sun," the dishonor, and 
worse than the dishonor, which he had brought into the 
house of Uriah. Hear what Mr. Carlyle says on this 
subject: " David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into 
sins enough — blackest crimes — there was no want of 



42 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

sin. And, therefore, unbelievers sneer and ask, ' Is 
this your man according to God's heart V The sneer, 
I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are 
faults, what are the outward details of a life if the 
inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, the often- 
baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten ? . . . 
David's life and history, as written for us in those 
psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever 
given us of a man's moral progress and warfare here 
below. All earnest souls will ever discover in it the 
faithful struggle of one earnest human soul toward 
what is good and best. Struggle often baffled — sore 
baffled — driven as into entire wreck, yet a struggle 
never ended ; ever with tears, repentance, true, uncon- 
querable purpose, begun anew." 

THE SUN STANDING STILL. 

The miracle of the sun standing still at the com- 
mand of Joshua has been greatly cavilled at by infi- 
dels, but certainly without sufficient reason. This 
miracle was known to those of old who had no means 
of access to the divine writings. We find the event 
mythologically related, and there is not one system of 
belief, of which astronomical observations have formed 
a part, in which this " long day " has not been noticed. 

The answer to the objection that Joshua commanded 
the "sun" instead of the "earth" to stand still, is ob- 
vious. The Scriptures generally speak in popular and 
not in scientific language. Written under the guidance 
of a more than human wisdom, and freighted by the 
providence of God with truth for the illumination and 
redemption of mankind, they waste none of their 
power in teaching geography, astronomy, or philoso- 



FOURTH LETTER. 43 

phy, but employ on all these subjects the current speech 
and method of their times. Thus they speak of the 
sun's rising and setting, of the ends of the earth, of 
passing from one end of heaven to another, etc. In- 
deed, it was only in this way that Joshua could have 
conveyed any clear idea to the people of what he in- 
tended to express by the command. Had he uttered 
the words, "Earth, stand thou still upon thine axis," 
they would have* thought him absolutely distracted. 
He spoke therefore in the common, popular style 
adopted by philosophers themselves in ordinary dis- 
course, and every one can see that it was obviously the 
proper mode. Nor can any one object to this diction 
in the sacred writers without virtually entering his 
protest against the every-day language of all enlight- 
ened countries on the earth. Whether, therefore, the 
sun or the globe be supposed to have been arrested in 
its course on this occasion is immaterial to the truth of 
the narrative, as the appearance in each case would be 
the same. 

Some eminent scholars maintain, that the phenom- 
enon related was merely optical; that the rotatory 
motion of the earth was not disturbed, but that instead 
of this the light of the sun and moon was supernaturaily 
prolonged by the same laws of refraction and reflection 
that ordinarily cause the sun to appear above the horizon 
when he is in reality below it. And as this would of 
course have had all the visible effect of actually bring- 
ing the earth to a pause in its revolution round its axis, 
and as this, in their opinion, answers all the demands 
of the text, it is not necessary to seek any more satis- 
factory solution of the difficulty. 

We prefer, how r ever, to adhere to the ordinary in- 



44 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

terpretation — that the sun slackened its apparent mo- 
tion, or, that the earth slackened its actual motion in 
obedience to the command given — bearing in mind, at 
the same time, that this cessation was not sudden, but 
gradual, according to the record that the sun "hasted 
not to go down for a whole day." The fact is, that in 
arguing against this miracle, objectors argue altogether 
from the wrong stand-point. A mischievous boy may 
by interfering with a single wheel djsturb or ruin an 
elaborate machine. For as he has no comprehensive 
acquaintance with the whole, he is unable to compen- 
sate for the power he suspends. But are we to suppose 
that He who arranged every part of the universal 
frame, and gave to each its important office, fitting it 
so nicely into its relative position — that He, if He 
touches one point, forgets or has no power over the 
rest? It is monstrous to suppose that if the Deity 
stayed the earth's revolution He would not by the 
same exertion of His power provide against the ruin 
that would doubtless have ensued if the machine were 
stopped by a human hand. The w T ord that could pro- 
duce the one effect could as well produce the other. 
We may freely acknowledge that there will be no need- 
less expenditure of power ; but yet hard and easy, it 
cannot be too frequently repeated, have no application 
to the doings of an Omnipotent hand. 

"Thou beckonest,. Almighty ! from the tree 
The blossom's leaf doth fall, — 
Thou beckonest, and in immensity 
Is quenched a solar ball." 



FOURTH LETTER. 45 



It is objected that God is represented in the Scrip- 
tures as hardening men's hearts. The answer to this 
is, the rejection of truth and the abuse of blessings tend 
ever to " harden the heart." God, therefore, by mak- 
ing known His truth and by bestowing His blessings, 
only indirectly hardens men's hearts; that is, furnishes 
occasion for their hardening. Thus, the Divine mercy 
to Pharaoh in the withdrawal of the plagues at his 
request became the occasion of increasing his hard- 
ness, as he perverted the favor conferred and abused 
the grace of God. So it is ever. The sun, by the 
force of its heat, moistens the wax and dries the clay, 
softening the one and hardening the other; and, as 
this produces opposite effects by the same power, so, 
through the long-suffering of God, which reaches to 
all, some receive good and others evil, some are soft- 
ened and others hardened. AVe see examples of this 
truth continually. 

SLAUGHTER OF THE CANAANTTES. 

Another difficulty has been found in the slaughter 
of the Canaanites. "Appalling as such a fact is, and 
incomprehensible as it must a priori be, yet, so far as 
the moral government of God is concerned, it is no 
more appalling in the effects nor quite so incompre- 
hensible in character as those things which we are com- 
pelled to say He does or permits to be done in His 
ordinary administration of the world. The devasta- 
tions of pestilence, earthquake, famine, involving guilt 
and innocence, age and infancy in the same indiscrim- 
inate ruin, are just as awful and equally mysterious, 
while they are hardly so incomprehensible, because we 



46 INFIDELITY EEBUKED. 

are assured that in the case of the Canaanites the visi- 
tation was judicial; that their iniquity had been long 
borne with, and that " its measure was now full ;" that 
such was the grossness of all unutterable crimes with 
which they were tainted that, as in the case of Sodom 
and Gomorrah, something little short of extirpation 
was the only remedy. Besides,- as the people of those 
ages were affected by no proof of the power of the gods 
which they worshipped, so deeply, as by giving them 
victory in war, there was a propriety in ordering that 
the extermination of the Canaanites, which might have 
been accomplished by a pestilence, fire or earthquake, 
should be effected by the Israelites, as mere instru- 
ments in the hands of a righteous Providence, inas- 
much as this was the clearest and most intelligible 
method of displaying the power and righteousness of 
the God of Israel, His power over the pretended gods 
of other nations, and His righteous hatred of the crimes 
into which they had fallen. 

IMPRECATORY PSALMS. 

It is alleged by the enemies of the Bible that what 
are called the " imprecatory psalms" are immoral and 
unchristian in spirit and intention. But this is not 
true. These psalms were chanted by the Hebrew king, 
not as the expression of his personal sentiments to- 
ward his enemies, or those of the Lord, but in his 
character as the type of Christ, the Judge of men. 
They do not necessarily imply any private revenge or 
ill will. They lie in the sphere of governmental rela- 
tions ; they cover the claims of justice, the necessities 
of righteous rule ; they pray that wickedness may not 
triumph — that it may be overthrown j they rejoice be- 



FOURTH LETTER. 47 

nevolently in anticipating its most signal and thorough 
discomfiture ; they covet the extirpation of wrong, and 
oppression, and deceit, root and branch, trunk and 
leaf — that the Doegs and Ahithophels of all lands and 
days may be made as the stubble and ground fine as 
the dust. There is no contradiction in asking for this 
and in giving thanks for this, with a true pity for their 
fate and an honest " would to God " that it had not 
been needed. The closing expression of one of these 
psalms — "And men shall know that Thou, whose 
name is Jehovah, art alone most high over all the 
earth" — shows the real mind and heart of the writer. 
It is a God-fearing piety which inspires and controls 
him. 

WARS AND PERSECUTIONS. 

I can only further notice, Sir, the charge of infidels 
that wars and persecutions are ascribable to the in- 
fluence of Christianity. How baseless is such an alle- 
gation ! Is there any tendency in the principles of 
the Gospel to the enkindling of strife, hatred, war or 
bloodshed ? AVas the character of its Founder, were 
the characters of the Apostles and primitive Chris- 
tians, among whom the native influence of Christianity 
was most unequivocally exhibited, in any manner in- 
dicative of such a tendency in its principles ? Is not 
the whole history of the purest ages of the Gospel, as 
well as every page in the Xew Testament, directly in 
proof of the very opposite effect ? Did not all the evils 
of war and national dissension prevail much more 
universally before the establishment of Christianity 
than they have done since? Is not the influence of 
this religion plainly visible in mitigating those horrors 
of war which she has not exterminated ? And as to 



48 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

those which have continued to subsist, are they in direct 
consequence, or in spite of her influence, the fruit of 
the tree or the poisonous weeds at its root, which oppose 
its growth ? 

If persecutions were of the spirit of Christianity, 
where this most prevails that would most abound. But 
the reverse is notoriously true. Religious wars have uni- 
formly resulted from the acts and motives of unchris- 
tian men, who, becoming tyrants over the souls and 
bodies of their fellows, have erected stakes and gibbets 
and founded dungeons. Isolated instances, indeed, 
may be found, when, under the influence of evil ex- 
amples and depraved public sentiment, or driven by 
oppression, men of undoubted Christian principle have 
turned aside from rectitude in these respects; but perse- 
cution and every harsh and cruel mode of propagating 
Christianity have ever been condemned by those who, 
in every age, have enjoyed the best reputation as Chris- 
tians, and the Bible not only does not teach but most 
expressly denounces such practices. 



FIFTH LETTER. 

Sir : Let us continue the consideration of objections 
urged by infidels against the Bible. 

MYSTERIES. 

There is, I maintain, no force in the objection that 
some parts of the Scriptures are mysteries. Mysteries 
meet us on every side. The animal world is full of 
them. The problem of animal life is to this day as 
mysterious and unsolved, and probably insoluble, as it 
ever was. Pathology, the doctrine of disease, is as 
dark to this hour as any doctrine in theology. The 
vegetable world is full of mystery. There is not a 
flower or blade of grass that has not in it more mystery 
than all the wise men in the world can remove. The 
mineral world is full of mystery. Scarcely a stone can 
we take up but it presents to us the inexplicable mar- 
vels either of chemical affinity or of crystallization. 
The anatomist, with all his discoveries, cannot tell us 
how mind and matter are united, and exercise power 
over each other. Nor can the astronomer, though he 
calculates with such wonderful accuracy the motions 
of the heavenly bodies, explain upon what all these 
motions rest. How unreasonable, then, is it to object 
to the Bible, because mysteries are found in portions 
of it ! If there were no mysteries, would not their 
absence be as valid a ground of objection as their pres- 
4 (49) 



50 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

ence is? If a book professing to come from the infi- 
nite God could all be grasped by man's finite under- 
standing, would not this very fact prove that the vol- 
ume wanted the signs most elementary of a heavenly 
origin? Besides, it is perfectly plain that for any one 
to insist upon a Revelation which would not only tell 
us that such and such things are, but also explain how 
they are, is actually to declare no Revelation to be 
necessary at all, for if Reason could follow "such a 
Revelation, why might she not have risen herself to 
the same region to which she has shown herself able 
to follow; and in such a case, of course, there would 
be no necessity at all for the Revelation, for all the 
topics on which it would undertake to give light were 
previously within Reason's reach. Her power to un- 
derstand them would show that she had power to dis- 
cover them. 

The truth is, Sir, as any one can see, who wishes to 
see it, that the Bible by its very mysteriousness is 
adapted to accomplish its purpose. " It is wisely fitted 
for the formation of character. It is a revelation clear 
enough to render faith possible, and obscure enough to 
leave unbelief possible. It affords thus a trial or test 
of character. It searches the heart. Too bright as 
well as too dark a revelation might defeat the very end 
of revelation. It would bring the educational and 
probationary period of life to a close ; it would bring 
on the day of judgment. The very difficulties and 
limitations of revelation are adapted also to the condi- 
tions of moral growth. It requires and it repays toil. 
It tasks and tries and puzzles and strengthens faith. 
It is like man to make everything regular, easy, and 
plain, but that is not like the God of nature, of his' 



FIFTH LETTER. 51 

tory, or of the Bible. A revelation in which the way 
never could be missed, a revelation made level and 
smooth to our feet, would be like the work of man, 
but not like the builder of the mountains. Were there 
no Alps for men to climb, no ocean depths beneath the 
plummet's reach, no stars still unresolved, no Scylla and 
Charybdis waiting to catch up the unskilful voyager, 
no burdens of toil and sorrow laid upon our manhood, 
if this life were only the play of children, and all the 
days were sunshine, then, indeed, might we expect to 
find a Bible without difficulties, a Gospel without par- 
ables, a kingdom of truth without tasks for the athlete, 
and without rewards for the victor. But the God of 
nature, of history, and of the Bible, surely does not 
intend to people his heaven with a race of moral im- 
beciles. "To him that overcometh," is the promise — 
seven times repeated — of "the crown of life." 

" The Word of God," as an ancient writer well says, 
" is bread that nourishes some, and a sword that pierces 
others. It is the odor of life to them who live by 
faith and die sincerely to themselves, and it is the odor 
of death to those who are alienated from God, and live 
shut up in themselves by pride. In it God has so 
mixed light and shade that the humble and docile find 
there nothing but truth and comfort, whilst the indo- 
cile and presumptuous find nothing but error and in- 
credulity. All the difficulties immediately vanish when 
the mind is cured of presumption ; then, according to 
the rule of Augustine, we pass over all we do not un- 
derstand, and are edified at what we do understand." 

DISCREPANCIES. 

In relation to the discrepancies of the Bible, at 



52 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

which sceptics so much cavil, Dr. Charles Hodge says: 
"These discrepancies are for the most part trivial, re- 
lating in most cases to numbers or dates. The great 
majority of them are only apparent, and yield to care- 
ful examination. Many of them may be fairly ascribed 
to errors of transcribers. The marvel and the miracle 
is, that there are so few of any real importance. Consid- 
ering that the different books of the Bible were writ- 
ten not only by different authors, but by men of all 
degrees of culture, living in the course of fifteen hun- 
dred or two thousand years, it is altogether unaccount- 
able that they should agree perfectly on any other hy- 
pothesis than that the writers were under the guidance 
of the Spirit of God. In this respect, as in all others, 
the Bible stands alone. . . . The errors in matters of 
fact which sceptics search out bear no proportion to the 
whole. No sane man would deny that the Parthenon 
was built of marble, even if here and there a speck of 
sandstone should be detected in the structure." 

LIMITED DIFFUSION. 

Is it a valid objection to the Bible, that it is limited 
in the extent of its diffusion ? We maintain that it is 
not. " The Divine procedure for man's spiritual wel- 
fare seems conducted on the principle by which that 
for his temporal welfare has been made. God has 
provided in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms a 
great variety of medicines, and has furnished the vast 
storehouse of nature with materials for the various 
useful arts, which contribute to our safety, convenience 
and comfort. He has also endowed us with the phys- 
ical and mental faculties by which we may make these 
provisions available. Yet we find that in His provi- 



FIFTH LETTER. 53 

dence, long periods have elapsed before some very 
important remedies and valuable discoveries in the 
sciences and arts have become known to man. Thou- 
sands are still unaffected by them. Owing to indolence, 
and ignorance, prejudice and passion, it has often been 
only after long labor, unsuccessful experiments, con- 
tempt, disputes, divisions, controversies, doubts and 
rejections, that some of them have obtained reception 
and success. Many who greatly need them cannot be 
brought to appreciate them. To millions they are 
never offered. Others again derive no benefit from 
them on account of some circumstances which coun- 
tervail their effects. In short, we thus see that these 
provisions are neither certain, perfect nor universal. 
So has been the course of Providence in respect of a 
revelation." 

ASTRONOMICAL OBJECTION. 

It has been alleged as improbable in view of the 
vastness of creation, that God would redeem, by the 
sacrifice of His Son, the inhabitants of so small a por- 
tion of His dominions as our earth. To this it may 
be replied, that we only know the effects of the 
redemption by Christ so far as it relates to ourselves. 
We cannot tell how widely its blessings may extend. 
For anything we know to the contrary, there is not a 
world in existence that does not derive incalculable 
advantages from the sacrifice of Calvary, not one cor- 
ner of creation where its effects are not felt, and that 
for good. Such an argument, therefore, does not 
throw any cloud over divine revelation, nor has it any 
power to shake our faith in the verity of the Christian 
dispensation. It is enough for us to know, that if 
there be, as we see there is, a contest going on between 



54 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

the powers of good and evil, those powers must have 
some ground whereupon the battle between them may 
be fought, and that it is not of any consequence, com- 
pared with the importance of the interests at stake, 
where the contest shall take place, or how seemingly 
insignificant may be the spot on which the strife shall 
find its arena. It is, indeed, the veriest folly, to object 
to the Bible because it ascribes an importance to our 
earth which geography does not, and, because it makes 
our world the Thermopylae of the universe, to flaunt 
this in the faces of the friends of Kevelation, as a mark 
of superior wisdom and scientific culture. 

Dr. Arnott thus conclusively disposes of the objection 
in question. This phase of unbelief is refuted by the 
necessary attributes of God and by the written revel- 
ation of His will. What relation, capable of being 
appreciated or calculated, subsists between material 
bulk and moral character ? The question between 
great and small is totally distinct from the question 
between good and evil. Number and extension cannot 
exercise or illustrate the moral character either of God 
or man. We should ourselves despise the mischievous 
caprice which should give to the biggest man in the 
city the honors that are due to the best. Right and 
wrong are matters that move on other lines and at 
higher levels than great and small, before both human 
tribunals and divine. 

There is, perhaps, as much reason for saying that 
this earth is too large, as for saying that it is too small, 
for being the scene of God's greatest work. The tele- 
scope has opened a long receding vista of wonders, 
where the observer is lost in the abyss of distance and 
magnitude, the microscope has opened another long 



FIFTH LETTER. 55 

receding vista of wonders, where the observer is lost 
in the abyss of nearness and minuteness equally beyond 
his reach. Between the great and the small, who 
shall determine and prescribe the centre-point equi- 
distant from both extremes, which the Infinite ought 
to have chosen as a theatre for the display of His 
greatest glory ? 

In the divine government generally, as well as in 
revealed religion particularly, the aim is not to choose 
the widest stage, but on any stage that may be chosen 
to execute the Creator's purpose, and achieve the 
creature's good. A battle is fought, an enemy crushed, 
and a kingdom won on some remote and barren moor: 
no man suggests, by way of challenging the authen- 
ticity of the record, that a conflict waged between 
hosts so powerful, and involving interests so momen- 
tous, could not have taken place on an insignificant 
spot, while the continent contained many larger and 
more fertile plains: neither can the loss incurred by 
the sin of men, and the gain gotten by the redemption 
of Christ, be measured by the size of the world in 
which the events emerged. It is enough that here 
the first Adam fell and the Second Adam triumphed, 
that here evil overcame good, and good in turn over- 
came evil. There was room on this earth for Eden 
and for Calvary ; this globe supplies the fulcrum 
whereon all God's government leans. The Redeemer 
came not to the largest world, but to the lost world. 
Even so, Father." 

DIVISIONS OF CHRISTIANS. 

The variety of opinion which exists among adhe- 
rents of the Bible, as to its teachings, has been a 



56 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

stumbling-stone to many, but, evidently, without any 
necessity. The divisions of Christians, as has been well 
said, are no more, nor more important, than reasoning 
from other things, we might presume. Laws and consti- 
tutions, though carefully drawn by the wisest men, edu- 
cation, medicine, agriculture, natural and moral science, 
and even mathematics, are all subjects on which, either 
as to their principles, modes of exhibition or applica- 
tion, great diversity of opinion exists. And it is ob- 
servable, that the acrimony, zeal and pertinacity which 
are evinced by sectaries, are usually in the direct ratio 
of the general importance of a subject, or the inverse 
ratio of that of its specialities. But no one pretends 
that division or controversy implies that its subject is 
one of doubt or uncertainty, or that any system is re- 
sponsible for the variety of opinions of which it is the 
occasion. This is more frequently owing to the influ- 
ence of extrinsic causes. 

Then, again, it must not be forgotten that there is 
more agreement among Christians on the fundamental 
propositions of Christianity, than can be found among 
the adherents of any other system of moral truth. 
Not one in ten thousand but will say that they teach 
an intense sinfulness of men, the necessity of regenera- 
tion by a Divine power, an atonement for sin in the 
sufferings of Jesus Christ, and one way of appropriat- 
ing that atonement by repentance and faith. Through 
Christendom fundamental differences of creed are the 
exception. They are an almost inappreciable part of 
the whole sum of religious differences about us. 
What makes such outcry and strife of dispute is chiefly 
the mint, anise and cumin of theology rather than 
its paschal lamb. 



SIXTH LETTER. 

Sir : The literary excellence of the Bible has elicited 
the strongest expressions of admiration from men of 
splendid talents and profound erudition. "The sublimity 
of the Bible's language," says the eloquent Judson, "caps 
the climax of rhetoric. ... Its delineations, in pre- 
cision, fulness and force of description, far exceed the 
boldest strokes and finest touches of the master-spirits of 
every age and clime. ... As a book of poetry and 
eloquence it stands in lofty grandeur, towering above 
the noblest productions of the most brilliant talents 
that have illuminated and enraptured the classic world." 
" It is," said that eminent orator, William Wirt, " the 
only universal classic — the classic of all mankind, of 
every age and country, of time and eternity; humble 
and simple as the primer of the child, grand and mag- 
nificent as the epic and the oration, the ode and the 
drama, when genius, with his chariot of fire and his 
horses of fire, ascends in a whirlwind into the heaven 
of his own invention." Fisher Ames, the distinguished 
statesman and orator, was accustomed to say : " I will 
hazard the assertion that no man ever did or ever will 
become truly eloquent without being a constant reader 
of the Bible and an admirer of the purity and sub- 
limity of its language." " I call the Book of Job," 
says Carlyle, " apart from all theories about it, one of 
the grandest things ever written with a pen. A noble 

(57) 



58 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

book ! All men's book ! Such living likenesses were 
never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconcil- 
iation, oldest choral melody— as of the heart of man- 
kind — so soft and great, as the summer midnight, as 
the world with its seas, and stars ! There is nothing 
written, I think, of equal literary merit." 

How easy it is to confirm such tributes by a glance 
at the Book which they extol ! 

HISTORICAL COMPOSITIONS. 

Look at the Bible's historical compositions. They 
are the most simple, natural, affecting and well-told 
narratives in the world. Witness the history of Abra- 
ham, Isaac and Jacob and his family — the recapitula- 
tions of Deuteronomy — the narratives of Ezra and 
Nehemiah — the story of the Saviour's trial and cruci- 
fixion, and the life of the Apostle Paul. For fidelity 
and impartiality, for unvarnished truth, for the choice 
of its matter, its unity, its concise and graphic descrip- 
tions of character, and, above all, its usefulness, the his- 
torical parts of this book are without a parallel. No 
critic can say of them : " They are too monotonous, 
too wordy, or too uniformly stately, tragical and em- 
phatic." The characters walk and breathe. They are 
nature, and nothing but nature. By a single stroke of 
the pencil we often have their portrait. We see them. 
We hear them. Every scene in which we behold them 
is a fit subject for thepainter. Nor should it be for- 
gotten that the finest subjects for historic painting 
within the circle of the fine arts have been selected 
from the Scriptures. 

ORATORY. 

Look at the Bible's oratory. Where can our eyes 



SIXTH LETTER. 59 

fall upon a finer piece of pleading than is furnished in 
the speech of Juplah to Joseph, when he and his breth- 
ren had been brought back to Egypt by the stratagem 
of putting a silver cup into Benjamin's sack ? or a 
greater display of genuine eloquence than we have in 
the defence of Paul as he stood at the tribunal of 
Agrippa a prisoner in chains but a fearless freeman of 
the Lord ? 

LACONIC MAXIMS. 

Look at its laconic maxims and rules for direction 
in private, social, domestic and public life. What col- 
lection of these, not excepting the golden verses of 
Pythagoras themselves, equal the Proverbs of Solomon, 
which Gibbon admitted display a larger compass of 
thought and experience than he supposed to belong 
either to a Jew or a king ? 

PARABLES. 

Look at its parables. What could be superior, of 
this kind, to Jotham's of the trees, Nathan's of the 
ewe-lamb, and those which Jesus spake — the picture 
of the good Samaritan, and the description of the un- 
happy Prodigal — those perfect gems, with their beau- 
tiful proportions and admirable delicacy of truth and 
coloring — masterpieces which need no illustration, and 
which additions would only encumber? 

NARRATIVES. 

Does a simple story interest us? What could be 
more beautiful than that one bearing the name of the 
youthful Moabitess, in which the widowed distress of 
Naomi, her affectionate concern for her daughters, the 
reluctant departure of Orpah, the dutiful attachment 



60 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

of Ruth and the sorrowful return to Bethlehem, are 
so touchingly delineated ? 

INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 

As to incidents of travel, what reader of taste and 
feeling, who has followed the much enduring hero of 
the Odyssey with growing delight and increasing sym- 
pathy, though in a work of fiction, through all his 
wanderings, can peruse with inferior interest the gen- 
uine voyages of the Apostle of the Gentiles over nearly 
the same seas ? 

POETRY. 

As for poetry, where are tragic strains so mournful 
and tender as the lamentations of Jeremiah, or of 
David over Saul and Jonathan ? What could exceed 
the music of the song of Amoz sweeping the chords to 
the glory of the holy city ? And what can be com- 
pared with Ezekiel's prediction of the destruction of 
Egypt, or the Psalmist's representation of God's ubi- 
quity — "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or 
whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend 
up into heaven, Thou art there ! If I make my bed 
in hell, behold Thou art there ! If I take the wings 
of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the 
sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me and Thy right 
hand shall hold me." 

AID IN THE PRODUCTION OF LITERATURE. 

Not only, Sir, does the Bible contain unequalled spe- 
cimens of poetry, but it has also rendered important 
aid in the production of those of human origin which 
have been most universally admired. Shakspeare, 
Byron and Sou they are not a little indebted to it for 



SIXTH LETTER. 61 

some of their best scenes and inspirations, and "Cotter's 
Saturday Night/' of Burns, is due to its suggestive in- 
fluence. And had it not been for the sacred associa- 
tions which it has thrown around Zion and Olivet, 
Siloara and Calvary, Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered" 
would not have appeared. Neither without its influ- 
ence would " Paradise Lost" have seen the light, nor 
the "Night Thoughts," the "Task" and the "Seasons" 
have been, what Montgomery has declared they are, the 
only universally and permanently popular long poems 
in the English language; for the first three of them, 
as will be recollected, are decidedly religious in their 
character, and the last owes its principal charm to the 
pure and elevated spirit of devotion which it occasion- 
ally breathes. 

It was at this sacred fountain, mainly, that the au- 
thors of these celebrated productions had their fancy 
enriched with its brilliant treasures. Here Milton re- 
ceived the light which has rendered him superior in 
majesty of thought and splendor of expression to 
earth's brightest luminaries; here Young lit up the 
fires of his immortal muse; here Cowper learned to 
anticipate the millennial blessedness ; here Thomson 
derived much of his excellence, especially in the prep- 
aration of his supremely admirable hymn ; and here, 
it may be added, Pope was taught to write of the 
" Messiah " in a manner which eclipses all his original 
productions in combined elevation of thought, affluence 
of imagery, beauty of diction and fervency of spirit. 

INFLUENCE ON PHILOSOPHY. 

As to the influence of the Bible on philosophy, every 
one knows who is conversant with the subject it was 



62 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

from the day in which this venerable volume was 
brought forth from the darkness under which scholas- 
ticism had covered it, and became a new and pervading 
element of thought in the intellect of nations which 
were blessed with its light, that we find philosophy 
and science assuming their new guise and making 
strides unknown before. As has well been observed, 
w T e hear of no Copernicus, nor Tycho Brahe, or Kep- 
ler, or Galileo, till we have heard of a Luther, a 
Zwingle, and a Calvin. It is true, indeed, that we may 
occasionally find some distinguished philosopher in 
lands where the Bible was comparatively a sealed 
book, but, if so, we see him in a constant antagonism 
with the darkness around him. He is like a star that 
dwells alone. He is not one of a bright constellation. 
The sky in which we discover him is not congenial 
to the display of kindred lights. If we would behold 
a firmament where such luminaries rise and shine in 
clusters, giving and receiving from each other the 
lustre which creates perfect day, and where their influ- 
ence is felt in a philosophy that reaches high and 
deep into the treasures of nature, and brings forth her 
choicest gifts for the benefit of man, we must find it 
where the Word of God circulates as free as the air 
we breathe, where its truth shines unchecked and un- 
trammelled as light from the heavens. We do not find 
Bacons, Boyles, Newtons, Davys, Herschels, or Pro- 
fessor Henrys in heathen lands or in Spain, Portugal, 
or Italy, but in countries such as England, Scotland, 
and America, over which the Scriptures pour their ef- 
fulgence. 

PRESIDENT HOPKINS' OPINION. 

In addition to the attractive literary aspects of the 



SIXTH LETTER. 63 

Bible mention must be made of the prodigious litera- 
ture which it has evoked. " No book," says President 
Hopkins, "not nature itself, has ever waked up intel- 
lectual activity like the Bible. On the battle-field of 
truth it has ever been around this that the conflict has 
raged. What book, besides, ever caused the writing 
of so many other books? Take from the libraries of 
Christendom all those which have sprung (I will not 
say indirectly, but directly) from it — those written to 
oppose, or defend, or elucidate it — and how would they 
be diminished ! The very multitude of infidel books 
is a witness to the power with which the Bible stimu- 
lates the intellect. Why do we not see the same 
amount of active intellect coming up and dashing and 
roaring around the Koran ? " 

Such, Sir, is a mere glance at the literary excellence 
of the Bible. It has stirred the intellect of the world. 
It is the repository of noble thoughts, the originator 
of splendid imagery, the oracle of soundest wisdom. 
Wherever possessed it has fostered the spirit of learning 
in all its varied departments, and promoted general in- 
telligence among the mass of the people. It is the 
grand text-book of the true student. It sparkles with 
brilliance, it blazes with beauty, and it breathes the 
spirit of liberty. Let this Book and its influences, di- 
rect and indirect, be blotted out of existence, and at 
once the sun that illuminates our literary heavens is 
extinguished, and the strength of our whole literature 
is impaired and its beauty marred. 

A PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED. 

Here, then, is a problem to be solved. How came 
this Book to have this wonderful character ? What 



64 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

could have given its writers such transcendent power 
of thought and expression ? What could have given the 
land of the Hebrews such a distinguished pre-eminence 
in these grand attributes ? What could have rendered 
her such a culminating point of intellect? How comes 
it to pass that such a vast storehouse of thought, intel- 
ligence and taste should be found in her of which we 
have no trace in any nation preceding her, and from 
which the cultivated taste of subsequent nations bor- 
rowed so liberally ? No proof is needed that though 
the banks of Jordan were as green and the cedars of 
Lebanon were as lofty when the land was peopled by 
the Hittite, the Amorite and the Perizzite as when 
ruled under the sceptre of the Hebrew kings, yet while 
those nations held it from border to border, " darkness 
covered the earth and gross darkness the people," both 
in mind and morals. How, then, came the downward 
tendency of the human mind, which at that time 
existed, to be arrested and reversed among the nation 
of the Hebrews? The only answer that can be given 
to these inquiries is, that the Most High selected that 
people as a fresh depository of knowledge from Himself, 
and having planted them in the land promised to their 
fathers, by direct inspiration made them acquainted 
with His being, His attributes, His will and His 
works. There is no explanation, either in fact or 
philosophy, to account for the uprising and recovery 
of the human intellect from its former lethargy which 
then took place, and which has since diffused its influ- 
ence through the world, unless we ascribe it to the 
revealed will of Him "in whom are hid all the treas- 
ures of wisdom and knowledge.'' 



SIXTH LETTER. 65 

WHAT AN ABLE WRITER SAYS. 

" Whence is it," says an able writer, " that the 
herdsmen and fishermen and tentmakers of Judea have 
given a Book to the world which is so superior to all 
the productions of human genius and learning, so 
undivided and unique in its object, and in its design 
so unutterably grand and elevated? What presiding 
genius, what master mind was it that controlled and 
propelled them at every step? If the greatness of the 
cause may be ascertained from the greatness of the 
effect, is not this Book, as a mere intellectual effort, 
inexplicable upon any other supposition than that it is 
of Divine origin ? Does not the light that emanates 
from these pages proceed from the great Fountain and 
eternal source of knowledge? Is it not the production 
of the Infinite Mind? Is it not impossible that it 
should have been the result of human invention? Is 
it not utterly beyond the grasp of man ? Has it not 
an elevation of thought, a vigor, an extent, a greatness 
of conception which makes the proudest efforts of 
human genius melt away like an untimely birth, and 
which bears on the face of it the intelligence and signa- 
ture of Heaven ? " 

In this connection it may be proper to advert again 
to the impossibility of the Bible's being the work of 
imposture. Its very literary structure proves this. 
Take the Old Testament for illustration. What di- 
versity in language and expression ! Isaiah does not 
write like Moses, nor Jeremiah like Ezekiel, and be- 
tween these and each of the Minor Prophets, as relates 
to style, there is a great gulf fixed. The grammatical 
structure of language in the books of Moses contains 
provincialisms; Isaiah moulds common words into 
5 



66 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

new forms ; Jeremiah and Ezekiel abound in Chalda- 
isms. Then what diversity in the march of thought 
and range of imagery ! The strong strokes which 
Moses gives to the stringed instrument yield to the 
soft intonations of David, as he strays along rivulets 
and banks, over plains, and among flocks and herds. 
One poet is original, as Isaiah, Joel, and Habakkuk ; 
another imitative, as Ezekiel. One wanders the un- 
trodden path of genius, while at his side another 
travels on the footway of unadorned truth. There is 
nowhere a sudden transition, but throughout a gradual 
progression. One writer supposes the existence of 
another. How, then, could one impostor have forged 
such writings ? Or how could several impostors, in a 
later century, even if we could imagine them making 
common cause for such a purpose, have forged these 
writings? How was it possible for them to do this in 
a manner so conformable to the progress of the human 
mind? 



SEVENTH LETTER. 

Sir: It is really surprising with what confidence 
and courage men like yourself, who claim superior 
wisdom in the realm of science, will hurl their dis- 
coveries at the volume of Revelation, just as if these 
discoveries were final and certain, instead of being, - as 
they at least are, doubtful in their character. 

DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE UNCERTAIN. 

The past has a lesson for us on this subject. For 
example, erroneous and intrinsically absurd as was the 
Ptolemaic theory of the universe, it was for some 1400 
years the accepted astronomical science, and it is but 
250 years since Galileo, under threatened penalty for 
maintaining an " awful heresy," was compelled to 
"abjure, rail at, and abominate" the Copernican sys- 
tem which affirmed, what everybody now believes, 
that the earth revolves around the sun. So with light. 
From Newton's time up to within less than a century, 
the emanation or corpuscular theory respecting light, 
taught as it was by that prince of philosophers, 
was universally believed to be a scientific verity, and 
every scholar in Optics was made to believe that vision 
was abscribable to a ceaseless emission of luminiferous 
matter from the sun and other luminous bodies, and 
the striking of this matter against our visual organs. 

It was under this theory that the question was often 

(67) 



68 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

sneeringly asked : " How is it that the Bible rep- 
resents light as existing before the sun and moon were 
created ? " And yet how changed the views of scientists 
now! Humboldt, Wagner, Schubert, Agassiz and 
Guyot have shown that light exists independently of 
the sun, and results from molecular action or combi- 
nation.. Hence the command*" Light be" was simply 
another way of saying: " Let molecular action begin," 
whereupon light was at once evolved. And thus, as 
Professor Dana says, " at last, through modern scien- 
tific researches, we learn that the appearance of light 
on the first day and of the sun on the fourth — an idea 
foreign to man's unaided conceptions — is as much in 
the volume of nature as that of sacred writ." 

In addition to the lesson of the pad let us not over- 
look the present unsettled state of science. Voltaire 
said, in his scoffing mood, of the theories of creation 
which came under his notice : " Philosophers put them- 
selves without ceremony in the place of God, and de- 
stroy and renew the world after their own fashion." 
How applicable is the spirit of this remark to many 
modern scientists ? How widely they differ from each 
other! Lamark, for example, held to spontaneous 
generation. The author of the book, " Vestiges of 
Creation," so celebrated thirty years ago, but utterly 
fallen out of the popular notice to-day, took even more 
extreme views. Darwin denounces both. Huxley is 
at sword's point with Darwin on the question of a 
Creator who breathed life at first into one or more 
beings. Wallace insists that Darwin's great doctrine 
of natural selection is not proven, and if proven would 
be entirely inadequate to account for the origin of man. 
Owen contends for the physical unity of the race, and 



SEVENTH LETTER. 69 

Agassiz, while granting the moral unity of the race, 
contends for different pairs in different geographical 
centres. Herbert Spencer denounces all the rest of the 
scientists, deeming his theory about force sufficient to 
account for the world as it is, and for the origin of the 
human race; while Miller, Dana and Guyot — names 
that equal any — hold most zealously to the theory of 
one human pair, and on scientific grounds indorse the 
Scripture statements as to the origin of the race. So 
with the theories of eminent geologists — say, for in- 
stance, on the question of the age of the earth. They 
differ from each other by tens of thousands of years. 
The very last deliverances of scientists in this direction 
are most significant — that of the President of the 
British Association and that of the Vice-President of 
the American Academy of Natural Sciences — both of 
whom have admitted it to be the prevailing feeling of 
the geologists that the " whole foundation of theoretic 
geology must be reconstructed. " Is it not true, then, 
that science is unsettled, and that until it can assert 
definite and acknowledged conclusions it is premature 
to demand a reconciliation between it and Revelation ? 



Dr. Rudolph Virchow, the eminent Professor of 
Pathology, of Berlin, said : "All attempts to trans- 
form our problems into doctrines, to introduce our theo- 
ries as the basis of a plan of education — particularly 
the attempt simply to depose the Church and to replace 
its dogma by a religion of descent — these attempts, I 
say, must fail. Therefore let us be moderate, let us 
exercise resignation, so that we give even the most 
treasured problems which we put forth always as prob- 



70 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

lems only. . . Do not take this for confirmed truth, 
be prepared that this may perhaps be changed, only for 
the moment we are of opinion that it may be true" 
Such counsel from such a source should be heeded. 
The sands of time are strewn with the wrecks of sci- 
entific fancies which have sprung up from the teeming 
brains of men who boast of their learning and ability, 
but which have perished forever like the shadowy 
phantoms of the night. Christian men have no quarrel 
with the facts of science. But when men shift their 
position from year to year, when theories which can 
hardly stand without propping, and over which scien- 
tists themselves wrangle and dispute and show no signs 
of coming to an agreement, are pressed upon us as au- 
thoritative, with all the marks of infallibility which dis- 
tinguished the ages of darkness that are passed, we beg 
to be excused from accepting theories so crude or state- 
ments so feebly sustained. A volley of boiled peas 
will not batter down the fortress of Gibraltar, nor will 
the explosion of a firecracker overturn the everlasting 
hills; and it will require more than the mere theoriz- 
ing of a man who claims that he has descended from a 
monkey to expel the Almighty God from the universe 
which He has made, or hush the voice of the heavens 
which declare His glory, or the throbbings of the 
countless loyal hearts that are filled and strengthened 
by His grace and love. 

AN INFIDEL OBJECTION. 

It is urged by infidels against the Bible that "a per- 
fect volume should be perfect in its science.' 7 But how 
futile is this objection ! It is natural, and even neces- 
sary, that the records of a revelation should employ the 



SEVENTH LETTER. 71 

current speech and method of the times in which they 
were written. How much more reasonable was it for 
the sacred writers to speak of sunrise and sunset (as we 
do even now) than to expound the laws of the planet- 
ary motion, and to refer to the ends of the earth in- 
stead of explaining its rotundity, and to call insane 
persons lunatics than to enter a special disclaimer 
against the influence of the moon in cerebral disease ! 
The fact is, as has been well remarked, that books thus 
written would have been in part unintelligible to the 
men of their own times; and, so far as they were un- 
derstood, would have run so entirely counter to their 
received opinions on extra-religious subjects as to 
awaken incredulity as to their religious contents. Sci- 
entific truth can be legitimately reached only step-wise, 
often with age-long preparation for a new step in ad- 
vance, often with long interval between the announce- 
ment and the popular reception of a new fact, theory 
or law. Thoroughly scientific Scriptures would have 
laid upon them the impossible task of anticipating this 
progress; of revolutionizing men's notions about the 
universe before they knew the reasons for changing 
them, and, failing of this, they would necessarily have 
failed of a hospitable reception for their religious con- 
tents. 

WHAT HUGH MILLER SAYS. 

" What," says Hugh Miller, " would sceptics such 
as Hobbes and Hume have said of an opening chapter 
in Genesis that would describe successive periods — 
first, of mollusks, star lilies and crustaceans; next of 
fishes ; next of reptiles and birds, then of mammals, 
and finally of man — and that would minutely portray 
a period in which there were lizards bulkier than 



72 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

elephants, reptilian whales furnished with necks slim and 
long as the bodies of great snakes, a*hd flving dragons, 
whose spread of wing greatly more than doubled that 
of the largest bird ? The world would assuredly not 
receive such a revelation." 

STRONG TESTIMONIES IN FAVOR OF THE HARMONY 
OF SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 

How strong the testimonies of learned men in favor 
of the harmony of science and the Bible ! 

"Thus far," says Dr. Samuel Hopkins, "the demon- 
strations of natural science have been expositions -of 
the Mosaic records, and, being such, they foreshadow 
the grand result to which her labors are tending — a 
complete verification of all the scientific mysteries 
recorded in our sacred writings." 

" Science," says Dr. Atwater, " so far from disprov- 
ing, confirms the entire inspiration of Scripture. This 
appears from the fact that there is no other way of 
accounting for the great amount of scientific truth, 
wholly unknown to ancient science, which the Bible 
sets forth. Take the most momentous of all — the cos- 
mogony of the first chapter of Genesis, which presents 
the order of the creative epochs essentially as the latest 
conclusions of geological research show it to have been. 
Now, all this was entirely unknown to the early science 
and knowledge of the world. How could any writer 
of the book of Genesis have discovered or conceived of 
it, or have been led to make such a narration, the scien- 
tific import of which was wholly unknown to him, 
without supernatural guidance? Science, then, so far 
from discrediting, proves the Divine inspiration of the 
Bible in this climacteric and crucial case. But the 



SEVENTH LETTER. 73 

same is true of the latest trend of scientific discovery 
in reference to such matters as the unity of the race, 
the fall, the deluge, the Babel confusion of tongues 
and consequent dispersion, and the repeopling of the 
earth in separate portions by Noah's three sons. That 
the drift of ethnic, linguistic and geologic science is 
in this direction, is undeniable." 

"I feel," said Professor Silliman, "that science and 
religion may walk hand in hand. They form two dis- 
tinct volumes of revelation, and, both being records of 
the will of the Creator, both may be received as con- 
stituting a unity, declaring the mind of God." 

To these valuable testimonies might be added many 
such, as the following: 

"All human discoveries seem to be made only for 
the purpose of confirming the sacred Scriptures." — 
Herschel. 

"In my investigations of natural phenomena, when 
I can meet anything in the Bible it affords me a firm 
platform on which to stand." — Lieutenant Maury. 

"The grand old Book of God still stands, and this 
old earth the more its leaves are turned over and pon- 
dered the more it will sustain and illustrate the Sacred 
Word." — Professor Dana. 

" The Shasters of the Hindoos contain false astron- 
omy as well as false physiology, and the Koran of 
Mohammed distinctly avows the Ptolemaic system of 
the heavenly bodies, and so interwoven are these scien- 
tific errors with the religions of these sacred books 
that when you have proved the former you have dis- 
proved the latter. But the Bible, stating only facts, 
and adopting no system of human philosophy, has 
ever stood, and ever shall stand, in sublime simplicity 
and undecaying strength, while the winds and the 
waves of conflicting human opinions roar and dash 
harmlessly around, and the wrecks of a thousand false 



74 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

systems of philosophy and religion are strewed along 
its base." — Professor Hitchcock. 

" There is no need to be frightened at the phantoms 
raised by such terms as matter, and force, and mole-> 
cnles, and protoplasmic energy, and rhythmic vibrations 
of the brain. There are no real terrors in a philosophy 
which affirms the conceivability that two and two 
might possibly make five, or in that which predicates 
that an infinite number of straight lines constitute a 
finite surface, or that which denies all evidence of a 
design in nature, or in that which assimilates the mo- 
tives which induce a parent to support his offspring 
to the pleasures derived from wine and music, or in 
that which boldly asserts the unknowableness of the 
Supreme and the vanity of prayer. Surely philos- 
ophies which involve results such as these have no 
permanent grasp on human nature. They are in them- 
selves suicidal, and in their turn, after their brief day, 
will, like other philosophies, be refuted or denied by 
the next comer, and are doomed to accomplish the 
happy dispatch." — Professor Pritchard, 



NO NEED FOR ALARM. 

Any alarm, therefore, which the friends of Revela- 
tion may feel from the allegation that it conflicts with 
science is wholly unnecessary. They have nothing to 
fear from any discoveries that can be made in the 
heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters un- 
der the earth. The geologist may dive and delve into 
our globe's deepest recesses ; the astronomer may move 
along his star-paved way until we are dazzled at the 
story of his ascents ; and the evolutionist may discourse 
learnedly about the whole animal creation culminat- 
ing in man, having sprung from a little particle of jelly 
floating in some primeval sea ; but, after all, the pillars 
of the " sure word of prophecy " will remain firm as 



SEVENTH LETTER. 75 

ever. Let science perfect yet more her telescopes and 
make taller her observatories, deeper her mines, and 
more searching her crucibles, and yet will not all the 
research, even though the new masters of physical lore 
should blaspheme where a Cuvier, a Newton and others 
adored, bring God into contradiction with Himself; or 
subvert the truth which He has given, or eclipse the 
light which shineth in this dark place. Still will it 
be true, however boldly it may be alleged that Jeho- 
vah's works conflict with His Word, that the highest 
deductions of reason harmonize with moral truth. 

Certainly, if the scientists who assail the Bible had 
more of the spirit of the greatest of philosophers, as 
expressed in words quoted in every child's book: "I 
am but a child, picking up pebbles on the shore of the 
great sea of Truth," they would be less rash and reck- 
less in assaulting the Word of God with their so-called 
" discoveries." It is high time for them to under- 
stand that their bold assertions must fall short of 
accomplishing their design. It is not as easy as they 
imagine to unsettle men's faith in the oracles of re- 
vealed truth. A religion wrought into the world's 
history through the long centuries, mastering the con- 
fidence of men in spite of intellectual struggle, verify- 
ing itself to the heart through practical experience in 
sorrow and trial, justifying itself to the deepest intui- 
tions of the whole race in spiritual things — a religion 
that has quickened thought, overthrown despotism, 
softened manners, inspired hope : whose banner is light 
and whose breath is benediction — such a religion can- 
not be dislodged from men's affection and confidence 
by boasting prophecy, by counter-revelation out of a 
" vain imagination," nor by decrying the intelligence 



76 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

of those who cling to it. The "seed" which the 
modern " birds of the air" would with the old appe- 
tite devour, is no longer a seed, as they fancy, but has 
" become a tree/' in the branches of which they them- 
selves are " lodging." Well would it be for them also 
to remember, that upon the attitude we assume to the 
Bible depends what we find in it. Those who come 
to it with a receptivity for truth find their faith con- 
firmed ; but to those who come as doubters, God's prin- 
ciple is true, — to the pure He shows Himself pure, 
and to the froward He shows Himself froward, — God 
resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. As 
Cowper has beautifully said : 

"Learning itself, received into a mind 
By nature weak, or viciously inclined, 
Serves but to lead philosophers astray, 
Where children would with ease discern the way." 



EIGHTH LETTER. 

Sir : The Bible is the oldest book in the world. 
It was written when the foundations were being laid. 
It goes further than any other book toward the time 
when the waters of the deluge subsided from the hills 
of Western Asia, further than any other toward the 
very morning of creation, when " the sons of God 
shouted for joy." 

TESTIMONY OF CRITICS. 

All candid critics admit that the Scriptures contain 
the most ancient forms of truth now known to men. 
And well they might. Any one, with the aid of chro- 
nological tables, may easily make for himself profitable 
comparisons between the antiquity of the book and 
that of other writings and events. The volume con- 
tains the only authentic history of the world before the 
flood. We find in the Pentateuch one or two stanzas 
of poetry composed in the antediluvian period. The 
Hebrew statutes were enacted a thousand years before 
Justinian reformed the Roman jurisprudence. In the 
Bible we have the record of chartered rights secured 
to the people more than two thousand years before 
Magna Charta. 

It is beyond doubt that the first chapter of Genesis 
contains the oldest writing: twenty-five hundred years 
before the invention of printing. Xenophon's record 

177) 



78 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

of the conversation of Socrates, in his Memorabilia, 
seems an old book to us, yet similar topics were dis- 
cussed in Ecclesiastes six hundred years before. The 
works of Tacitus, Plutarch, and Quintillian are not 
modern, yet the books of the New Testament are older 
than they. 

As to the book of Job, its age is beyond conjecture. 
Those who make it as modern as they can are com- 
pelled to place its origin at least one thousand years 
before Homer. When Priam was king of Troy, Job 
was of remote antiquity. The name of Alexander has 
no modern sound for us, yet when Alexander invaded 
Syria, the book of Job might have been read before 
him as the work of an author more time-honored then 
than the name of Alexander is now. 

The writings of Confucius are modern compared 
with most of the Bible, and the most that the Hindoos 
can justly claim for their sacred books, the Vedas, is 
that they were written five hundred years after the 
death of Moses. The Koran is a book fresh from the 
press compared with the Scriptures. 

WONDERFUL FOR ITS AGE AND PRESERVATION. 

With what wonder should we gaze upon a fortress 
that had withstood the assaults of succeeding genera- 
tions for thousands of years ! And with what strange 
interest should we look at a man who, during a life of 
many centuries, had often been cast into the sea with- 
out being drowned, drugged with strychnine without 
being poisoned, and riddled with bullets without being 
numbered with the slain? 

Thus has it been with the Word of God during all 
its history. It was not to be expected that a volume 



EIGHTH LETTER. 79 

which imposes self-restraint upon the wilful, humility 
upon the arrogant, mercy upon the cruel — which would 
bend the knees of the self-righteous philosophers before 
the cross of a crucified Redeemer, and which would 
quell all the tumultuous desires which attach us to this 
world, that it may plant the sublime hopes and aspira- 
tions of eternity in their room — would command the 
willing deference of an unconverted world. Nor has 
the result failed to sustain the antecedent probability. 
The Bible has had, all along its course, to struggle 
against opposition, visible and latent, artful and vio- 
lent. It has had to contend with the prevalence of 
error, the tyranny of passion, and the cruelty of per- 
secution. Numerous foes have risen up against it: 
pagans, who have aimed to destroy it, bigots, who have 
striven to monopolize it, and ungodly men, who have 
hated it for its purity and penalties. Jehoiakim cut 
to pieces the Divine roll, and threw it into the fire. 
About one hundred and seventy years before Christ, 
Antiochus caused all the copies of the Jewish Scrip- 
tures to be burnt. Three hundred and three years 
after, Diocletian, by an edict, ordered all the Scriptures 
to be committed to the flames, and Eusebius, the his- 
torian, tells us that he saw large heaps of them burning 
in the market-place. Nor has this spirit ever failed to 
show itself. 

But from all the assaults which have been made 
upon it, the Bible has been preserved. Though cast 
into the fire, it has risen triumphantly from its ashes, 
though crushed, yet, like the diamond, every part of 
which, when broken, exhibits the beauty and perfection 
of the whole, it has proved its indestructibility, and, 
though sunk in the waters, it has come up again, 



80 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

studded and shining with the costliest pearls. It has 
survived the shock of all its enemies, and withstood 
the ravages of time. Like the ark of Noah, upborne 
and protected by the invisible hand of the Almighty, 
it has safely ridden over the rolling billows of human 
history, and, as- the fabled pillars of Seth, which are 
said to have bidden defiance to the Deluge, it has stood 
unmoved in the midst of that flood which sweeps away 
men, with their labors, into oblivion. Many a vol- 
ume that once bade fair for immortality is now utterly 
forgotten. Of the unnumbered thousands that have 
been written since the dawn of literature, how few, 
even of those that once filled the trump of fame, and 
were ranked among the chief productions of human 
genius, have escaped the ravages of time, and the for- 
getfulness of man ! Though the shelves of mighty 
libraries groan with the learned labors of the past, yet 
of the vast majority of the works therein deposited, it 
may be said that, "like the bodies of Egyptian kings 
in their pyramids, they retain only a grim semblance 
of life amid neglect, darkness, and decay." Oh ! what 
wreck and ruin meet the eye as it glances at the past ! 
Thrones have crumbled, empires have fallen, and phi- 
losophers and their systems have vanished away. 
The very monuments of man's power have been con- 
verted into the mockery of his weakness. His eternal 
cities moulder in their ruins; the serpent hisses in the 
cabinet where he planned his empire, and echo is 
startled by the foot which breaks the silence that has 
reigned for ages in his hall of feast and song. Yet, 
notwithstanding all this desolation, the stream which 
first bubbled up at the foot of the Eternal Throne has 
continued to roll on with silent majesty and might, 



EIGHTH LETTER. 81 

bearing down each opposing barrier, and declaring to 
perishing multitudes on its brink, that, while "all flesh 
is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower 
of grass, which fadeth away, the word of the Lord 
endureth forever." 

NOT DILUTED. 

Nor is this all. Not only has the Bible not been 
destroyed, but it has not even been diluted by the lapse 
of centuries. It has not been ruined by the sapping 
of its foundations, or by the incorporation of any new 
element with it, which has marred its integrity, or viti- 
ated its purity. With it, like God its author, there 
has been no variableness, or shadow of a change. The 
world has suffered its boasted classics to be blurred, 
but the Church can rejoice over the fair pages of her 
precious books, assured that the far descent of these 
venerable treasures has neither altered their character, 
nor changed their identity. These Divine oracles have 
come down to us in such unimpaired fulness and ac- 
curacy, that we are placed as advantageously towards 
them as the generation which gazed upon " that book 
of the law " to which Moses had been adding chron- 
icles and statutes for forty years, or those crowds which, 
hung on the lips of Jesus, as He recited a parable on 
the shore of the Galilean lake, or those churches which 
received from Paul or Peter one of their epistles of 
warning or exposition. 

TRIUMPHED OVER ALL OPPOSITION. 

It is even so. No weapon that has been formed 

against the Bible has prospered. It has survived the 

power of secret treachery and open violence. The time 

has been, when to read it was death. Infidelity has 

6 



82 INFIDELITY KEBUKED. 

fought against it with relentless malignity, but it has 
successfully resisted all its potency, parsing unhurt 
through the hands of Julians, Celsuses, and Porphyrys, 
and defying all the sophistries of Hume, the eloquence 
of Gibbon, the inuendoes of Rousseau, the blasphemy 
of Paine, the mockery of Voltaire, the empty cavilling 
of Strauss, the shallow witticism of Renan, and the 
bold onslaughts of the Communists of France and the 
Rationalistic commentators of Germany. 

Thus has the Word of God lived and triumphed. 
It has not only maintained itself, but false philosophies 
and pretended revelations have obtained a stronger 
hold in the world, simply by counterfeiting its out- 
ward semblance. Thus has it made its way, carrying 
its own burdens, and the much heavier weights that 
human depravity has put upon it. Tested by the 
chances of any mere human conflict, of any philosophic 
or literary strife, it would ages ago have vanished from 
the field and been consigned to oblivion, but here it is 
yet, the mightiest element in human thought, and chal- 
lenging to the conflict the mightiest of human antag- 
onisms. How it rises up, ever higher and stronger, 
against every fresh assault ! every new phase of un- 
belief, when it is really new, only calling out some 
before unknown aspect of power in this exhaustless 
defence. 

Wonderful Book] "It survives both friends and 
foes. Without being able to speak one word in its 
own behalf, but what it has already said, without any 
power of explanation or rejoinder, in deprecation of 
the attacks made upon it, or to assist those who defend 
it, it passes along the ages in majestic silence. Impas- 
sive amidst all this tumult of controversy, in which it 



EIGHTH LETTER. 83 

takes no part, it might be likened to some great ship 
floating down a mighty river like the Amazon or Or- 
inoco, the shores of which are inhabited by various 
savage tribes. From everv little creek or inlet, from 
every petty port or bay, sally flotillas of canoes, some 
seemingly friendly and some seemingly hostile, filled 
with warriors in all the terrors of war paint and their 
artillery of bows and arrows. They are hostile tribes, 
and soon turning their weapons against one another, 
assail each other with great fury and mutual loss. 
Meantime the noble vessel silently moves on through 
the scene of confusion, without deigning to alter its 
course or to fire a shot : perhaps here and there a sea- 
man casts a compassionate glance from the lofty bul- 
warks, and wonders at the hardihood of those who 
come to assail his leviathan." 

DIFFUSION. 

"Wonderful Book ! the more it is opposed, the more 
it flourishes, and never did it bid as fair as at present 
to be the Book of the whole family of mankind. It 
has spread open its page in almost every land — it is 
printed in Chinese camps, pondered in the red man's 
wigwam, sought after in Benares, a school-book in 
Feejee, eagerly bought in Constantinople, loved in the 
kloofs of Kaffir-land, while the voices of the dead 
from Assyria to Egypt have been lifted up to bear it 
witness. 

Xo book has taken such a hold on the world. The 
world is not willing to let it die. Mark what even 
Theodore Parker, as truthfully, as strangely from his 
theological stand-point, says on this point: " The litera- 
ture of Greece, which goes up like incense from that land 



84 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

of temples and heroic deeds, has not half* the influence 
of this book from a nation alike despised in ancient and 
modern times. It is read of a Sabbath in all the ten 
thousand pulpits of our land. In all the temples of 
Christendom is its voice lifted up week by week. The 
sun never sets on its gleaming page. It goes equally 
to the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the 
king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar, 
and colors the talk of the street. The bark of the 
merchant cannot sail the sea without it; no ship of war 
goes to the conflict but the Bible is there. It enters 
men's closets, mingles in all the grief and cheerful- 
ness of life. The affianced maiden prays God in Scrip- 
ture for help in her new duties ; men are married by 
Scripture. The Bible attends them in their sickness 
when the fever of the world is on them. The aching 
head finds a softer pillow when the Bible lies under- 
neath. The mariner escaping from shipwreck clutches 
this first of his treasures, and keeps it sacred to God. 
It goes with the peddler in his crowded pack ; cheers 
him at eventide when he sits down dusty and fatigued • 
brightens the freshness of his morning face. It blesses 
us when we are born, gives names to half Christendom, 
rejoices with us, has sympathy for our mourning, tem- 
pers our grief to finer issues. It is the better part of 
our sermons. It lifts man above himself; our best of 
uttered prayers are in its storied speech, wherewith our 
fathers and our patriarchs prayed. The timid man 
about awaking from this dream of life looks through 
the glass of Scripture, and his eye grows bright; he 
does not fear to stand alone, to tread the way unknown 
and distant, to take the death-angel by the hand, and 
bid farewell to wife and babes and home. Men rest 



EIGHTH LETTER. 85 

on this their dearest hopes. It tells them of God and 
of His blessed Son — of earthly duties and of heavenly 

rest." 

PRESERVATION PROVES DIVINE ORIGIN. 

How plain is it, then, that the fact of the Bible's 
preservation from all the enmity with which it has 
been assailed, is a vindication of its heavenly origin ! 
It is utterly impossible to assign this hostility to any 
other cause than the disclosures which it makes re- 
specting the extreme deadliness of sin, and of the in- 
effable purity and justice of the Divine nature. Let 
it be even supposed that the unaided genius of man 
could have produced such a volume as the Bible, dis- 
playing, as it confessedly does, in the judgment even 
of its enemies, such sublimity of thought, such knowl- 
edge of the heart, and such amazing depth of wisdom 
— is it likely that writers of so extraordinary capacity 
would have given characteristics to their work which 
render it an object of such deep and widespread aver- 
sion ? — that they would have been so weak as to rep- 
resent God and human nature in characters unpalat- 
able to the natural man, and, most of all, on the sup- 
position that they were impostors, unpalatable to them- 
selves? Such a mixture of weakness and wisdom we 
must at once see to be incongruous and impossible. 

Yet the Book which these men have written has, 
through all the ages, made its way, and now flourishes. 
Surely in this preservation is an argument of the di- 
vinity of the volume, which no sophistry of infidelity 
can overthrow. The resistance of ages is its crowning 
legitimation. It is the visible battle-field of invisible 
forces, showing in the radiant faces of the martyrs who 
have died for it, and the unearthly struggles of those 



86 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

who have sought to banish it from the earth, what 
mysterious interests are suspended on its safety or de- 
struction. Beyond a doubt, a volume exhibiting signs 
of having been at one time trampled on by rage, at 
another moth-eaten by neglect, here scorched by the 
fires of bigotry, there stained with the venom of infi- 
delity, in every page sprinkled with the blood of its 
martyred defenders, and yet substantially entire in 
every part, has herein much to prove that it has al- 
ways been in the keeping of Omnipotence — in the hol- 
low of His hand. 

I press you, Sir, with this argument, and you cannot 
without unfairness deny its force. Other books have 
been launched upon the tide of time and gone down, 
leaving no trace upon the waters ! Why, then, does 
the Bible still live on, and speak in its quickening 
power? Why does it retain its vitality? Why do 
the winds and waves of human passions obey it ? It 
is because there is in it one circle of life that we find 
in no other book, but without which the spirit of man 
must die. Creation, providence, moral government, 
redemption, eternal life — blot out these words from 
human speech, and what becomes of the spirit of man? 
It is because this venerable volume links heaven and 
earth together — it is because this is its teaching and ut- 
terance, that it ever renews its youth, and speaks with 
an authority which can never die. 

" Read and revere the sacred page, a page 
Which not the whole creation could produce; 
Which not the conflagration shall destroy, 
In Nature's ruins not one letter lost." 



NINTH LETTER. 

Sir : As it is mainly against the Old Testament the 
assaults of infidelity are directed, I now propose to call 
your attention to some of its distinctive traits in proof 
of its superhuman origin. 

I have already adduced from its pages evidence of 
its historical, poetical and oratorical excellence. But it 
is manifest that any self-conscious exercise of the ar- 
tists' skill to produce beauty of this sort, is quite alien 
from the whole volume. It has poetry ; the sublimest 
that ever burned within the bosom of man, but it does 
not come with any pretense of possessing such, — there 
are thoughts and facts which totally overshadow even 
the sublime style of the writings. It has science. It 
dares to speak with authority of things past, present, 
and to come, of things seen and of that which lies far 
beyond the present scope of view. It passes out where 
no other utterance ever was heard, where all science is 
as silent as the tongue of the dead. But it does not 
aim to teach science, it has a loftier mission. So, too, 
it has law and philosophy, — but all these things are 
only incidents which, with superb power, cast excel- 
lency upon the sublimer truths which it unfolds, — but 
the shrubbery which grows upon the outer shoulders 
of this mountain of strength, — but the plumage of the 

angel that publishes glad tidings. 

(S7) 



88 INFIDELITY KEBUKED. 

RELATES TO GOD AND MAN. 

The whole purpose and spirit of the volume breathe 
of God, and of man's relations to God. This is its dis- 
tinctive character. The history purports to be a his- 
tory of the way in which God has governed tiie world, 
which He has formed from nothing, and in which He 
has placed man, and formed man into families and na- 
tions. The one thought which is always present is, 
that God's will must be done everywhere; that it is "a 
righteous will, and that in the end it will make right- 
eousness and peace prevail in the world. God, and 
man as formed for the knowledge and love of God, the 
conflict between man's lawless will and God's righteous 
will, the final victory of God's will over evil, — these 
are the one great subject of all law, of all history, of 
all poetry, of all teaching, of all prophecy, in this 
great national literature. Does not this fact place it 
alone in all extant literature ? 

Elsewhere we may find indeed something which aims 
to be theology, something which is human history, or 
human philosophy, or the skilful painting of human ac- 
tion and emotion. But there what aims to declare 
God, and what aims to describe man, are kept almost 
always apart. Here, and here alone, so far as we 
know, in any extensive literature, God and man are 
ever present to each other, and in the closest contact, 
and the light which comes from the throne of God 
irradiates and fills the world of human life. Here, 
and here alone, the divine and the human element of 
life are found together and in harmonious combination. 
Must not the people of which this is the literature be 
one which has been placed under some very special 
divine training? 



NINTH LETTER. 89 

TOUCHES LIFE OF INDIVIDUAL SOUL. 

The spirit of the Old Testament touches the life of 
the individual soul toward God quite as closely as it 
touches the springs of national and family life. Of 
this there is a striking example in the Book of Psalms. 
"This Hebrew anthology contains hymns of earnest 
aspiration, thanksgiving and self-communing, in which 
the devout spirit finds a second self. The melody of 
the Psalmist has many moods, but the song is ever the 
genuine outburst of his heart, and the reader is lured 
into living sympathy with it — nay, as it throbs under- 
neath the page, he is brought into immediate fellowship 
with the singer, and not with his shadow. For him- 
self, in his various changes, is embodied in his Psalms, 
whether he sinks in deep contrition or soars away in 
spiritual rapture, whether he extols mercy or sinks into 
awe before judgment, or whether he lays his sword and 
sceptre at the foot of the Throne in offer of suit and 
service or in acknowledgment that the kingdom and 
the victory are alike from God. The Psalter is the 
poetry of the spiritual life; its beauty, power and 
freshness never fail, for it does not consist of abstract 
and impersonal effusions, or of objective theological 
dogmas. Difference of age and country at once fades 
away. In the sorrows of this representative bard 
many a soul has seen its own, and has felt the load 
lightened by its share in his recorded consolations, 
while his loftier strains so glide into the ' merry 
heart ' that it sings them without any sense of strange- 
ness, without any consciousness of formal appropria- 
tion. Therefore the Psalms have always been very 
cherished com pan ions, not simply because they are a 
body of divine truth bearing on man's highest interest, 



90 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

but because they come home to human experiences and 
tenderly touch them on so many points ; because they 
are not only the true elements of public worship, but 
may also be murmured in earnest soliloquy as the 
spirit in confidence and joyousness lifts itself to God." 

LEGISLATIVE ASPECT. 

Glance now, Sir, at the legislative aspect of the Old 
Testament. The Mosaic Law, it is very evident, was 
not copied from any system existing elsewhere. It is 
evidently not the attempt of a speculative mind to 
legislate for an imaginary commonwealth, but a code 
which has regulated, or been intended to regulate, the 
conduct of men living in a definite country, partly 
embodying their ancient customary law, partly cor- 
recting it, and always distinctly practical in its aim. 
This being so, it is impossible not to be greatly im- 
pressed by the general spirit of humanity, of freedom, 
of good sense and fairness, which it breathes. The 
wisdom of the whole, as a system of rules intended to 
keep the children of Israel a separate people, devoted 
to the service of one God, in well-ordered simplicity 
of life, as a race of peasant proprietors, is very re- 
markable. 

"The hand of time," says an ancient writer, "has 
been passing over the mighty fabric of human laws 
for four thousand years, and yet little has been added 
to the stock of legal science, and little change has been 
made in the most improved principles of human juris- 
prudence since the days of Moses. As might have 
been justly supposed, there have been great improve- 
ments in commercial law, because the Hebrews were 
an agricultural, and not extensively a commercial pco- 



NINTH LETTER. 91 

pie. And there have been improvements in interna- 
tional law, because the Hebrews were, by divine com- 
mand, separated from other nations. Laws also have 
been changed by the condition of the countries for 
which they have been enacted ; they have been ex- 
tended in their specifications; they have been modified 
by the character, customs, religion, soil, position and 
pursuits of different nations, but the fundamental 
principles, the great outline of legislative science, are 
found in the civil polity of the Jews. The last four 
books of the Pentateuch contain the foundations of all 
wise legislation." 

THE DECALOGUE. 

In relation to the Decalogue, it is marked by a grand 
peculiarity which renders it entirely unique. It sub- 
ordinates, as indeed does the Bible throughout, ethics 
to theology. Its foundations, as has been said, are laid 
in the idea of God and our relations to Him ; its sanc- 
tions are derived from His will. The great commands 
of the " Second Table," the duties we owe to ourselves 
or our fellow-men, are here ultimately based on the re- 
lations in which all creatures stand to Him who de- 
mands our homage in the " First Table." Not that 
they are represented as the mere expression of arbi- 
trary will ; on the contrary, they are represented as 
emanating from a will itself determined by supreme 
rectitude, wisdom and goodness, which knows what is 
"good," and enjoins what it enjoins, from a perfect 
knowledge of our nature and the necessary conditions 
of our well-being. How much this draft of morality, 
consistently articulated as it is with the idea of God, 
differs from that of the heathen nations in general, is 
obvious enough to any one who has attentively consid- 
ered their history. 



92 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

CONFESS THEIR OWN INCOMPLETENESS. 

The Hebrew Scriptures confess their own incomplete- 
ness. They intimate a wonderful future, point alto- 
gether to it, and are wholly inexplicable, unless on the 
supposition of it. By this they are distinguished from 
every other writing of the same kind. Other nations 
in their religion have lived looking backward regret- 
fully to some past time, when knowledge was fuller 
and faith was stronger, and God was more honored. 
But the faithful Israelite, whilst being thankful for 
what had been already given him, ever more and more 
earnestly cherished the thought of something more 
which would be given in the latter days. That mys- 
terious volume which contains the records of this re- 
markable people, — so large, so various, and whose re- 
motest authors are a thousand years asunder, had a 
single character, and that character was promissory. 
That still follows it through all its many styles and all 
its many windings, — that still is found, — yea, more dis- 
tinctly caught, — in the dim recesses of those half-re- 
vealings where it whispers more than it speaks aloud. 
The Pentateuch moves with an epic cadence, Joshua 
rings with heroic numbers, and Judges sustains the mar- 
tial strain. In Ruth the song sinks to a gentle pas- 
toral, soon to break out as a sonnet in Esther, then 
swell to a drama in Job, and heave like a restless sea in 
the lyric Psalms. From these it subsides to a quieter 
temper in Proverbs, and, as if inspired by beatific vision, 
it rises into the ravishing strains of the Song of Songs, 
then drops to a wail in Lamentations, and then mounts 
again in the supernatural utterances of the sad strange 
Prophets. Yet, with all this wealth of variety, these 
books of the Old Testament are but the nine and 



NINTH LETTER. 93 

thirty parts of one compact epic, singing beforehand 
with a supernatural unity of purpose — "The Word 
made Fiesh." The golden threads of Christ's pro- 
phetic biography and the silver threads of His acted 
prophecy stretch from Genesis to Malachi, and here 
and there and everywhere, woven in by the Holy 
Spirit, are diamonds, glittering reflections beforehand 
of the one character of the epic, Jesus Christ. 

TENDERNESS. 

Another characteristic of the Hebrew Scriptures is 
the tenderness with which they are pervaded. It is 
apparently a very common impression that the New 
Testament is full of tenderness, and gentleness, and 
love, and the Old Testament of rigor, of justice and 
of punishment; that the Jesus of the New Testament 
represents a God of infinite mercy ; the Jehovah of the 
Old Testament a God hard, inexorable, unsympathetic. 
But it is very certain that, historically, those represen- 
tations of God in the New Testament, which are the 
most sacred to us, are found also in the Old Testa- 
ment; that Jesus Himself does but develop in a per- 
fected form the germ truths which are hidden in the 
writings of Moses, of David and of Isaiah. Where, for 
example, will one find a more touching representation 
of the tenderness of God than in Christ's parable of 
the Lost Sheep ? The shepherd comes after the sheep, 
takes it upon his shoulders, bears it home, and sum- 
mons his neighbors to rejoice with him. This picture 
has so appealed to the sympathies of men that it has 
been repeated in sermon, song, story and picture, and 
has not, to the present day, lost its beauty or its power. 
And yet Christ does but re-paint that which he found 



94 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

upon David's canvas, " The Lord is my Shepherd, I 
shall not want." He does but re-sing the song which 
Isaiah sang : — " He shall feed His flock like a shep- 
herd ; He shall gather the lambs with His arms, and 
carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those 
that arc with young." 

If there be a representation of God's tenderness 
which has taken even deeper hold upon the human 
heart, it is the one afforded by that other inimitable 
parable, — the parable of the Prodigal Son ; but, as in 
the acorn cut open one finds the oak with rootlets, stem 
and leaves complete, so this parable may be found en- 
folded in the seed that David planted : — " Like as a 
father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them 
that fear Him." 

In truth that picture of God which is of all others 
the tenderest and the sweetest, which draws us nearer 
to Him than His portrait as a shepherd, or even as a 
Father, is the picture afforded only by the Old Testa- 
ment, "as one whom his mother comforteth, so will I 
comfort you." The New Testament gives us our 
charter to cry out " Our Father;" the Old Testament 
gives us our charter to cry out " Our Mother God." 

Wherever, then, the notion of a hard, relentless and 
unsympathizing God may have come from, it is not 
fairly derived from the representation of His character, 
afforded by the sacred writers of the Old Testament 
books. 

STATISTICAL ACCURACY. 

The Hebrew Scriptures are characterized by statis- 
tical minuteness and accuracy. In all ancient mythical 
history there is that misty, magnifying, distorting, 
wonder-making, legendary air, confounding all chro- 



NINTH LETTER. 95 

nology and all geography, that absence of dates, that 
confusion of places, that blending of events far distant 
from each other in time and space, which show the 
want of all attesting means of knowledge. Such his- 
tory, instead of having any accurate chronicles of 
years, does not even make any pretence to it; it would 
seem to have regarded any such precision of places 
and times as at war with that feeling of the wonderful 
that filled the minds of its writers, and which dwells 
chiefly in the vast and the obscure. 

Not so with the Scripture history. " The moment 
we open its pages we discover a most remarkable dif- 
ference everywhere. This peculiarity, so obvious to 
the least reflecting reader, is what may be called the 
statistical character of the Scripture Chronicles. The 
Bible is a Book of Numbers. It is a trait maintained 
consistently throughout. From the exact nativities of 
the Antediluvian ages, from the precise dates of the rising 
and subsiding waters of the flood, from Noah's alma- 
nac, as we may say, down to Haggai's diary, or 
careful noting of the very year and month and day of 
the month, in which the word of the Lord came unto 
him, it is all of a piece, one consistent number-giving, 
time-keeping record. The Jews were a journalizing 
people, or genealogizing people ; the Bible is their 
family book of entries, just as we now employ certain 
pages of it as a register of births and deaths. Precise 
statistics are every where, and everywhere purporting to 
be from men who knew, and who are, in the main, sup- 
posed to be recording known present or passing facts. 
There is nothing like it in the history of any other 
people on earth, certainly not in any early history. 
All the way up to the flood, with a few gaps which 



96 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

seem to have been left designedly to baffle human cu- 
riosity, there is a regular chronological track." 

CONNECTION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 

The Old Testament was so constructed as to require 
and necessitate the New. We -have seen already that 
it confessed its own incompleteness ; but it did more: 
it laid the foundation of what was to follow. "The 
history of the Hebrew people/' says Ewald, "is, at the 
foundation, the history of the true religion passing 
through all the stages of progress by which it attained 
to its consummation, the religion which, on this nar- 
row territory, advances through all struggles to com- 
plete victory, and at length reveals itself in its full 
glory and might, to the end that, spreading abroad by 
its own irresistible energy, it may never vanish away, 
but may become the eternal heritage and blessing of 
all nations." 

A writer of great ability thus forcibly demonstrates 
the connection between the Old and New Testaments : 

"Old English conveyancers, in preparing the re- 
cords of the transfer of some important estate, drew 
up two copies of the same deed upon the opposite 
ends of one and the same parchment. Then the 
scrivener's knife severed the skin into two separate 
documents, by a line which was jagged like the teeth 
of a saw, or undulating like the hollows in the water 
of a lake rippling before the breeze. The old name 
'indenture' survives to this day at the head of our 
deeds, when the old usage of actual ' denting ' or ' in- 
denting' has been generally abandoned. One party, 
the original grantor, kept the one copy; the other, 
the purchaser, retained the counterpart. Was there 



NINTH LETTER. 97 

in after times doubt as to the genuineness of the docu- 
ment, antique simplicity soon determined the doubt by 
laying the two indented portions of the one original 
vellum together. If tooth met tooth, if the indenture 
tallied without shrinkage and without overlapping, 
there was tangible, visible demonstration of the original 
unity. There was the same grain in the skin, and 
there was exact coadaptation in the line of severance. 
The indenture stamped the genuineness. 

"Now, in our Bible, the Old and the New are not 
bare verbal transcripts the one of the other, but the 
same Divine Author who furnished both made the 
ancient to fit by a line indented in divine exactness and 
symmetry into the new, the wave in the low trough 
of it upon the one parchment meeting another wave 
in the answering crest of that wave as upon the other 
parchment, so that the two covenants thus authenti- 
cated showed the same Supreme Mind. It was a mind, 
one in its several dispensations, and harmonious through 
all ages of the world's history. Prophecy, or 'his- 
tory in anticipation/ responds to history, or prophecy 
becomes fact, across the two sides of a vast chasm, just 
as in the days of Joshua, Ebal pealed back to Gerizim 
and Gerizim pealed back to Ebal the alternate snatches 
of the same law, and the strophe and the antistrophe 
swelled up together, praising the same Jehovah, Leader 
of their exodus and Giver of all their victories. 
Promise, warning and unfinished history upon the one 
side, tallied with and matched fulfilment, and retribu- 
tion, and completed history on the other side. 'Com- 
paring spiritual things with spiritual,' is the Apostle's 
enunciation as to the rule of successful interpretation 
laid down by the Holy Ghost, the Inspirer of the en- 
7 



98 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

tire record. Collate the origins with the results — lay 
the pledges of Eden and Sinai against the achievements 
of Bethlehem and Calvary — and see illustrated, as over 
the stormy tides of human commotion, and over the 
wide chasms of earthly centuries, the unity and inflexi- 
bility of Him who is in one mind, and no one can turn 
Him, the far-sighted and the infallible Sovereign 
who, amid the heavings of primeval chaos, saw dis- 
tinctly the welterings of the final conflagration and the 
orderings of the last judgment. He — in this His 
unity of purpose, which He had maintained through 
all varieties of utterance, and all relays of successive 
scribes, and all mutations in the outer form of His 
providence — had indented the Old Testament so that 
it required and necessitated the New, and then resum- 
ing, after the interval of a dozen generations of man- 
kind, His unwavering, unforgetting scheme, He had 
indented the New Testament to supplement and to 
perfect the Old Testament." 



TENTH LETTER. 

Sir : Let me direct your attention to several other 
peculiarities of the Bible in addition to those already 
mentioned. This I do with regret that they must be 
so succinctly stated. 

PROGRESSIVENESS. 

In the general manner of the works of God, we see 
results attained by slow evolution from the minutest 
beginnings, and by a prolonged application as well 
as stupendous complexity of means and instruments. 
Progressive development, carrying out rudimental ideas 
through various changes of structure and condition to- 
ward a completed system, is the latest doctrine of science 
concerning physical nature, organized being, and hu- 
man society. So, from analogy, there was reason to 
expect a gradual and progressive revelation of the will 
of God. 

But this is also evident from other considerations. 
A revelation must involve a moral probation, else men 
would be treated as machines, and human responsibility 
would be destroyed. If the great purpose of creation 
is to be answered, there must be a preparation : a 
training, so to speak, of individuals and of the world. 
Revelation could not in this view be entire at once. 
No single period in the world's history could be fixed 
on in which the whole divine plan might be pro- 

i99) 



100 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

pounded, without violating the conditions of moral 
probation to most of the generations of mankind. 
There must be a gradual development, if the graces 
of faith and hope are to be exercised with practical 
effect upon human conduct. This is just the nature 
of the Bible revelation, propounding truth by degrees, 
human language and human instruments being em- 
ployed for this, so as to give the probationary purpose 
its fullest effect, sufficient being made known for the 
age to which any part of the revelation was made, and 
further developments coming after, not contrary to but 
illustrative and confirmatory of that which had pre- 
ceded, modelled after such a manner that, while each, 
as just said, was thoroughly suitable to its own time, 
the whole should when completed be of perfect con- 
sistency, and continue to serve its purpose of probation 
through the rest of the generations of the earth. The 
revelation must be coextensive with those who were to 
be benefited by it, and must therefore travel along the 
course of man's history. And to answer this end it 
must be shaped, without derogating from God's holi- 
ness, so as to meet man's ignorance, weakness, and sin. 

MISCELL A NEOUSNESS. 

Not with square and compasses of man's device has 
God built the earth and meted out the heavens. His 
creation is miscellaneous, broken up at every point — 
here a sheltered valley, there a profound abyss ; on one 
side a mountain with its summit in the clouds, on the 
other a leaping cataract; while off in the distance the 
waves lift up their voice, and in the depths above the 
stars move each on its separate path, and shine with a 
differing glory. Something like this analogy prepares 



TENTH LETTER. 101 

us to expect in the Bible. The want of systematic 
arrangement in it, therefore, instead of being a basis, 
as infidels allege, for an objection to the book, is, 
on the contrary, an argument and an evidence in its 
favor. 

"The complaint of the want of method in Scrip- 
ture," says an eminent scholar: " what is it in fact but 
this, that it is not dead, but living? — that it is no 
herbarium, no hortus siccus, but a garden ; a wilderness 
of sweets, with its flowers upon their stalks — its plants 
freshly growing, the dew upon their leaves, the mould 
about their roots — with its lowly hyssops and its cedars 
of God ? And when men say that there is a want of 
method in it, they would speak more accurately if they 
said that there was want of system, for the highest, 
even the method of the Spirit, may reign where system 
there is none. Method is divine — is inseparable from 
the ideas of God and of order, but system is of man, 
is a help to the weakness of his faculties, is the artifi- 
cial arrangement by which he brings within his limited 
ken that which in no other way he would be able to 
grasp. That there should be books of Systematic 
Theology — books with their plan and scheme thus 
lying on their very surface, and meeting us at once, — 
this is most needful, but most needful also that Scrip- 
ture should not be such a book. The dearest interests 
of all, of wise men equally as of women and children, 
demand this." 

VARIETY. 

If the Scriptures were to be the Book which should 
leaven the world, which should offer nutriment, not 
merely for some men, but for all men, there was a 
necessity that they should be characterized by diversity. 



102 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

This necessity seems to be inseparable, also, from the 
nature of their origin, as composed by numerous 
authors, writing at far distant dates, in different lan- 
guages, in the most diverse circumstances, and with 
the usual peculiarities of individual genius. 

Nor is there any inconsistency between what is now 
affirmed, and what was said in a previous letter touch- 
ing the Bible's unity. Oneness is not sameness, neither 
is it incompatible with variety. "Just as in the 
human body, we, having many members, are one body, 
and the perfection of the body is not the repetition of 
the same members over and over again, but the har- 
monious tempering of different members, all being 
instinct with one life — so it is in the Scripture : whether 
we look at the Old or New Testament, the same rich- 
ness and variety of form reveal themselves, so that it 
may be truly said, that out of the ground of this 
Paradise, the Lord God has made ' to grow every tree 
that is pleasant to the sight and good for food/" 

Men are very various in their turns of mind. One 
takes most kindly to narrative, another to proverb, 
another to poetry, another to epistle, another to the 
lofty oration. The same person in various moods is 
inclined, now to this and now to that form of writing. 
The Bible provides for this variety. Its histories 
describe, its poems sing, its apothegms curtly speak, 
its arguments enchain, its prophecies proclaim in min- 
gled prose and song. Its form and contents are so 
various as to suit every taste and meet every condition. 
On its pages the king and the president may learn 
something that concerns himself, and which, if studied 
and practised, would save many a nation from that 
worst of public nuisances — a godless ruler. The work- 



TENTH LETTER. 103 

ingman may here read of his craft, and in allusion to 
it discover that the God of the whole earth thinketh 
upon the poor and lowly. The merchant is reminded 
of the true merchandise, the pearl of great price, and 
is recommended to buy the truth and sell it not. The 
soldier, amid many records of hair-breadth escapes in 
the imminent deadly breach, will find an account of 
the good fight of faith and the whole armor of God. 
The sailor may not only read the history of a voyage 
and shipwreck, which, by competeut authority, has 
been declared the finest piece of composition in the 
Greek language, but he may learn how to navigate the 
sea of life, and reach at last the desired haven of 
immortality. The tradesman may not only find many 
thousand hints on buying and selling, but may also 
learn the truth, of which he has sometimes need to be 
reminded, that a just balance "is the delight of the 
Lord." The husbandman finds in this volume allu- 
sions almost innumerable to his calling, and by them 
is conducted to the understanding of the sowing of the 
good seed — of the growth of the Christian character 
from the early blade to the full corn in the ear, and is 
led to reflect upon the future great harvest of the 
world. And students everywhere are urged to "give 
attendance to reading/' and are reminded that " much 
study is a weariness to the flesh." It is addressed, also, 
to all stages of human life. Childhood never tires of 
the ark of bulrushes, of the coat of many colors, of 
the boy-prophet, of the Shunamite's son, of the youth 
that slew the giant, of the captive maid of Israel, of 
young Josiah, of the wonderful child found after three 
days' anxious search, surrounded by grave doctors, and 
both hearing and asking them questions. Youth finds 



104 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

entertainment and instruction in the biographies of 
Joseph, and Jacob, and Daniel, and others of that 
class. Manhood is yet charmed by the holy maxims, 
the just retributions, the unexpected deliverances, the 
heavenly principles, the lofty morals and the sublime 
doctrines of this old book. And old age is never 
weary of reading of its own crown of glory, of the fruit 
it may yield to the end of life, and of those promises 
which never fail amid the fleeting show and tinselled 
splendors of the present life. It is universal, also, 
in its adaptation to every state of the human heart. 
Here the presumptuous sinner is condemned ; the 
proud are confounded; the humble are exalted; the 
penitent are comforted ; the trembling believer is con- 
firmed ; the hypocrite is unmasked; the painted 
Pharisee is stripped of the rouge and the veneer ; the 
rejoicing saint is cautioned ; and man, whatever his 
spiritual condition, finds himself addressed by One 
who knoweth him altogether, and who understandeth 
his thoughts afar off. 

We have a most striking illustration of the vari- 
ety of the Bible in the representation which it makes 
of Jesus. One of our American artists, wishing to 
perfect for himself a portrait and a bust of Shakspeare, 
took the death mask from the face of the poet, and had 
twenty or thirty photographs made, from every pos- 
sible angle of vision, that he might get the fullest light 
on every point of the face and head ; then came the por- 
trait on the canvas, and then the stately head in marble. 
So we look at the figure and face of Christ, as these 
are given us in the Bible ; from the earliest prophecy, 
from the law, from the ritual, from the psalm and the 
song, from the evangelical prophecies of Isaiah, from 



TENTH LETTER. 105 

the story of Matthew, and the other of Mark, and the 
other of Luke, and the wonderful spiritual story of 
John, from the argument of Paul, the exhortation of 
Peter, and the great vision at last of the King in the 
heavens — when the garden, with which the race began, 
has become the eternal city of God, and when the babe 
prince is the Lord of the saints — we take all these, and 
from them all we get such a transcendent image of the 
Son of God as no one writer could have given. 

MYSTERIOUS POWER. 

The Bible has a most mysterious power. Coleridge 
confessed that it met him further down in his nature, 
and spoke deeper to his heart than any other volume. 
This is a fact that has again and again been felt. 
There are times in a man's history, says one, when 
these words seem to blaze with such a depth of signifi- 
cance that we tremble with awe, or thrill with glad- 
ness at the unutterable things that glow and stretch 
away behind them. They seem like apertures through 
which we see the awful light of eternity. This is not 
the fancy of a few heated enthusiasts, but the recorded 
testimony of some of the calmest, loftiest and purest 
minds of our race. Nor is it a mere literary phenom- 
enon, for it is felt by the Kaffre woman in the bush 
and the toiling artisan in the workshop as deeply as 
by the mystic dreamer of Kubla Khan or the lofty 
Jansenist of Port Royal. They all testify with one 
voice that as they gaze upon these words there are 
periods when they seem to open up a shaft of light, 
which at one time is all flashing with the brightness 
of Heaven and at another all red with the glare of 
Hell. How can this fact, as a mere psychological 



106 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

phenomenon, be explained ? If it be true that Jeho- 
vah has in very deed enshrined himself in these won- 
derful words, unfolding a gleam of the awful Shekinah 
to the unveiled and disenchanted spirit, we can under- 
stand this strange and mysterious power. If these 
books be as some wondrous wind-harp, or some Mem- 
nonian sculpture, from whose depths the breath of 
God's mouth and the light of God's presence evoke 
this strange melody, we can comprehend to some extent 
the secret of its entrancing strains. But if there is no 
such in-dwelling of the Godhead in these writings, 
and no such breathing of God's Spirit through these 
words, this fact stands before us in the phenomena of 
mind an inscrutable and inexplicable mystery. 

CARRIES ITS OWN EVIDENCE. 

The Bible carries in its contents evidence of its divine 
origin. It delivers things which could not have been 
known but by divine help. The narrative of creation, 
the notices of angels, the announcement of God's coun- 
sels, the description of the happy future inheritance 
of the righteous, and specially the utterances of pro- 
phecy, cannot have proceeded from man's unassisted 
powers. Either those high mysterious announcements 
are .the vain speculations of an unbridled imagination, 
or they have been communicated by some divine teach- 
ing. Either the predictions of the Bible are the mere 
guesses of sagacious men, or they are veritably the 
oracles of God. But see for a moment if they can be 
happy guesses. Let all license be given for explaining 
events by calling them coincidences ; let the times when 
they were uttered be brought down as low as ingenious 
critics desire to bring them : we have still the fact that, 



TENTH LETTER. 107 

in the age of Christ — nay, two centuries before Christ 
— there was a body of writings referring to the future 
condition of the Jews ; of Tyre, of Egypt, of Babylon, 
which the events of successive centuries, even to our 
own days, have been only more clearly confirming; so 
that we have standing proof before our eyes that 
things have happened, contrary to the probabilities of 
the times when these prophecies were delivered, but in 
singular accordance with the prophecies themselves. 
How is this to be explained? The only satisfactory 
conclusion is that the writers of such words were 
divinely guided. Any other hypothesis presents 
difficulties of the most formidable cast. 

INEXHAUSTIBLE. 

It belongs to the very primal necessities of a book 
which is ordained for the cultivating of humanity 
that it should be adapted to a life-long study ; that 
no man should ever come to its end, himself contain- 
ing it, instead of being contained by it, as by something 
far larger than himself. And who needs to be told 
that the Bible is of this inexhaustible character f It 
is so constructed as to develop constantly something 
new. It demands a vigorous exercise of the under 
standing. Xo man that has ever lived could be said 
to have read it through. Other books lose their interest 
after a few perusals, but the Bible never does. The 
more we read it the more we desire to read, and the 
more we find to read. It still has, after assiduous and 
repeated perusal, the charm of novelty, like the great 
orb of day, at which we are wont to gaze with unabated 
astonishment from infancy to old age. The more we 
gaze at its splendors the more is our vision dazzled 



108 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

and overpowered, and the more we investigate its truths 
the more do its resources appear unwasted and unwast- 
in£. There are men who have studied this volume 
most thoroughly and intensely, and who, the more they 
have studied, have been the more deeply convinced 
that it is a fathomless profound of light and knowl- 
edge. There are those who have made it the chief 
object of their investigation for half a century ; who 
have studiously examined every paragraph it contains 
some fifty or an hundred times, and who at every fresh 
perusal have discovered new thoughts and new sources 
for admiration and joy. 

When Christopher Columbus on his voyage of dis- 
covery gazed upon the wide, vast, rolling flood of water 
which poured into the ocean by the river Orinoco, he 
exclaimed to those about him in his little ship : " That 
stream, comrades, never has come from an island; be 
sure it has gathered its giant waters from a mighty 
continent." It was soon proved that his reasoning 
was just, and attested his clear insight and sagacious 
intellect. Who, in the same way, can contemplate the 
riches of thought and inexhaustible fulness of truth 
that are found in the Scriptures, and refrain from draw- 
ing a similar conclusion? "This book, so boundless 
in resources, has never come from a created mind; it 
bears its own witness to a Divine origin ; man is not 
its author, but man's Maker ; its fulness betokens not 
the finite, but the infinite." 

EXCLUSIVE IN CLAIM. 

The Bible is exclusive in its claims. This is not true 
of the many religions of which the world has been, 
and is now, full. Such as have perished were all local 



TENTH LETTER. 109 

and fraternizing, and so are all that exist now, with 
perhaps the exception of the lingering shade of Judaism. 
If they dwell apart, they acknowledge each other re- 
spectfully as well adapted to their several districts. If 
they dwell side by side in the same community, they 
make similar acknowledgments of their adaptation to 
diverse classes. If their deities were all arranged 
around the rotunda of a modern Pantheon, they would 
smile on each other and repose together in perpetual 
peace. But the Gospel is exclusive and repulsive. It 
claims to be the true religion and the only religion. It 
claims to be " worthy of all acceptation." It declares 
all other religions false and foul. It abhors any com- 
pliments from them. It disdains any participation 
with them. It denounces them all as execrable impo- 
sitions, and dooms them all to utter destruction. What 
an attitude this for any system of truth to assume, 
which was founded by a young Jew, who lived home- 
less and friendless and died upon the cross, and who 
engaged to publish and recommend His religion, not 
the wise, the learned and the eloquent, but plain, un- 
lettered men, penniless and powerless, who were un- 
known to fame, and whose names, now never to be 
forgotten, were never pronounced by those who con- 
stitute the schools of earthly wisdom ! 

UNIVERSAL ADAPTATION. 

The Bible is distinguished by universality of adapta- 
tion. It is the book of the human soul, made by Him 
who made the soul, and so made it in His wisdom that 
all its verities correspond with the wants, the wishes 
and the happiness of which the soul is most conscious. 
It is a glass in which man sees himself. It is the 



110 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

voice of God communing with the Spirit which He 
once made in His own image, to wake up its faculties 
into a resurrection of their own departed strength, 
and to restore it to the Divine favor and fellowship 
forfeited by sin. The religion it reveals is a religion 
for the race. 

Every other assumed revelation, as has just been 
hinted, has been addressed to but one phase of human- 
ity. They have been adapted to one age, to one people 
or one peculiar style of human thought. Their books 
have never assumed a cosmical character or been capa- 
ble of any catholic expansion. They could never be 
" accommodated " to other ages, or acclimated to other 
parts of the world. They are indigenous plants that 
can never grow out of the zone that gave them birth. 
They relate entirely and exclusively to the peculiari- 
ties of the region or district in which they originated. 
The religion of the Hindoo, for example, is evidently 
a religion for Hindostan alone. The religion of the 
Egyptian is evidently a religion for Egypt, and the 
religion of Mahomet is evidently local in its adap- 
tation. 

How different is Christianity ! There is no region 
of the earth where it cannot be instituted ; the man 
does not live to whom it may not be preached, and 
by whom it may not forthwith be enjoyed. It is simple 
in its nature, spiritual in its requirements, and divine 
in all its resources. Its truth is such as to instruct at 
once the illustrious Newton and the "Dairyman's 
Daughter," and its themes are such as both Milton 
and the "Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" can dwell on 
with delight. One of the acutest and most spiritual 
of all the commentators on the New Testament was 



TENTH LETTER. Ill 

the learned Bengel. We are told that when he was 
dying he said to the young man who was his nurse 
that night : " My young friend, give me some word of 
Scriptural consolation." The young man stammered 
and blushed, and said: "I cannot speak any word 
of consolation to such a great master in theology." 
" What?" said Bengel, "a theological student not able 
to speak a word of comfort to a dying man ? " Then 
the student gathered himself up and stammered out: 
" The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from 
all sin." The great man smiled and said : "Oh ! that 
is just what I wanted. It never sounded so sweet to 
me before as now." And yet the humblest peasant in 
all Germany who had savingly believed in Jesus could 
take the comfort of that just as well as Bengel. Thus 
it is with the Gospel. It suits every clime, color and 
condition. The Government does not exist under which 
it will not survive. Peculiarities, geographical, local 
or national, cannot be found by which it would be set 
at naught. Being a universal remedy, it operates in 
every temperature and latitude. Requiring no aid 
from the civil power, assuming no position or rank 
among the authorities of the world, it may yet be borne 
by the missionary with hope of success to the rough- 
clad Huron amongst the ice-bound lakes, to the re- 
clining, effeminate Asiatic, amid the fountains and 
odorific groves of his country, to the pigmy Laplander, 
along the consolidated surface of his snow, or to the 
inhabitants of the sunny islands of the southern seas. 

The Bible is characterized by increased vigor. Other 
religions, after they exist for a century or two, give 
signs of inanition and feebleness ; the frailty of age is 
upon them, but the strength of Christianity grows with 



112 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

its years ; it is not subject to the wasting influences of 
time — age brings with it no feebleness, centuries write 
no wrinkles on its brow. After eighteen centuries the 
dew of its youth is upon it. It is not content to slum- 
ber in any territory. It aims to acquire new dominion 
— even to complete the conquest of the world. In dis- 
tant parts of the earth it now flashes forth the sign of 
hope to the nations, and still its watchword is: "Amp- 
lius! Amplvus!" — further, still further. Onward — 
onward, while there is a spot of earth unexplored or 
a child of man unsaved. The graves of many who 
sought to extend its beneficent influence are found on 
heathen soil, while those who are its enemies enjoy at 
home its temporal blessings with base ingratitude, and 
even fill their purses with revenue from their bold and 
bad assaults upon it. 



ELEVENTH LETTER. 

Sir : Before directing your attention to the argument 
from Prophecy for the superhuman origin of the Bible, 
let me remind you that this source of evidence is pecu- 
liar to the Holy Scriptures. Nothing like it is found 
anywhere beside, and it accords perfectly with that 
system that nothing similar should be found elsewhere. 
Heathenism never made any clear and well-founded 
pretensions to this species of evidence. Mohammedan- 
ism, though it stands itself a proof of the truth of 
Scripture prophecy, is unsupported by a single predic- 
tion of its own. To the Christian only belongs this tes- 
timony of his faith, this growing evidence gathering 
strengthby length of time, and affording from age to 
age fresh proofs of its Divine origin. As a majestic 
river expands itself more and more the farther it re- 
moves from its source ; so prophecy, issuing from the 
first promise in Paradise as its fountain-head, acquired 
additional strength as 'it rolled down successive ages, 
and will still go on increasing in extent and grandeur, 
until it shall finally lose itself in the ocean of eternity. 

Only a few of the predictions of Scripture, neces- 
sarily, can now pass under our notice, and even these 
must receive but a succinct and summary review. 

THE JEWS. 

In considering the prophecies respecting the Jews we 
select those which are contained in the writings of 
8 (113) 



114 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

Moses, and to which the declarations of the later 
prophets give additional body and coloring, touching 
the future calamities of the nation. 

CONQUEST OF THEIR COUNTRY. 

"The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from 
far, from the ends of the earth, as swift as the eagle 
flieth ; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not under- 
stand, a nation of fierce countenance." " He shall eat 
the fruit of thy cattle and the fruit of thy land, until 
thou be destroyed " (Deut. xxviii. 49-51). In these 
words it is impossible not to see a description of the 
Romans, who were not neighbors to the Jews, as the 
Philistines, the Syrians and the Egyptians were, but had 
established the seat of their government at a great dis- 
tance in Italy, who were distinguished by the extent 
and rapidity of their conquests, spoke a language 
totally different from that of Judea, first reduced the 
country into the form of a province and afterwards 
laid it waste in the reign of the Emperor Vespasian. 

THEIR DREADFUL SUFFERINGS AT THE TIME OF THE 
CONQUEST. 

"He shall not regard the persons of the old, nor 
show favor to the young." " He shall besiege thee in 
all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come 
down, and thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, 
the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the 
Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege and in the 
straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee " 
(Deut. xxviii. 50, 53). Let Josephus, an eye-witness, 
prove how awfully this prediction was verified in the 
indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children 



ELEVENTH LETTER. 115 

by their unpitying foes, and in the dreadful famine 
which the wretched inhabitants suffered during the 
siege of Jerusalem. He relates one instance, and there 
might be many, of a woman who ate the flesh of her 
own child, and he says " that no other city ever suffered 
such things, as no generation from the beginning of the 
world so much abounded in wickedness." 

THEIR CAPTIVITY IN EGYPT. 

"And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with 
ships, and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for 
bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you " 
(Deut. xxviii. 68). Josephus informs us that when 
the city of Jerusalem was taken the captives who were 
above seventeen years of age were sent to the works in 
Egypt, but so little care was taken of these captives 
that eleven thousand of them perished for want. 
There is every probability, though the historian does 
not mention the fact, that they were conveyed to Egypt 
in ships, as the Romans had then a fleet in the Medi- 
terranean. The market was so overstocked that there 
were no purchasers, and they were sold for the merest 
trifle. 

DISPERSION OF THE NATION. 

"And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people 
from the one end of the earth even unto the other " 
(Dent, xxviii. 64). Everybody knows that this predic- 
tion has been fulfilled, and that the present state of the 
Jews exactly corresponds with it. They have no country, 
no province, no city which they can call their own, but 
for more than eighteen centuries have been strangers 
and wanderers, yet remain distinct. 



116 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

THEIR SERVING OTHER GODS. 

" There shalt thou serve other gods, which neither 
thou nor thy fathers have known — wood and stone " 
(Deut. xxviii. 64). This prediction was long since 
fulfilled in the fate of the ten tribes, who, wherever 
they reside, have adopted, the false religion of the 
heathen among whom they sojourn, and has been ful- 
filled in that part of the Jews, who w r ere more recently 
dispersed by the Romans, for it is well known that in 
popish countries, particularly in Spain and Portugal, 
many of them, to avoid persecution, have conformed to 
the established religion and become worshippers of 
images. 

THEIR SOCIAL OSTRACISM. 

It was foretold that they should " become an astonish- 
ment, a proverb and a by-word among all nations, and 
that their plagues should be wonderful " (Deut. xxviii. 
37). How has this prediction been, and how is it still, 
fulfilled in every country ? Surely the judgments 
visited on this people have been wonderful and of long 
continuance. The whole prophecy is truly wonderful, 
and affords a striking proof of the Divine prescience, 
when we reflect that it was delivered fifteen hundred 
years before the events, and foretold the rejection qf 
the Jews at the very same time when God was taking 
them to be His peculiar people. 

Look now at the prophecies respecting the nations in 
contact with Israel, and from time to time their con- 
querors or oppressors* 

EDOM. 

Edom should cease to be a people. "Thus saith the 
Lord God, because that Edom hath dealt against the 
house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly 



ELEVENTH LETTER. 117 

offended and revenged himself upon them. There- 
fore, thus saith the Lord God, I will also stretch out 
mine hand upon Edom and will cut off man and beast 
from it, and I will make it desolate from Teman, and 
they of Dedan shall fall by the sword. And I will lay 
my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people 
Israel, and they shall do in Edom according to mine 
anger and according to my fury, and they shall know 
my vengeance, saith the Lord God " (Ezek. xxv. 12- 
14). "And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the 
house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for 
stubble, and they shall kindle in them and devour 
them, and there shall not be any remaining of the 
house of Esau, for the Lord hath spoken it " (Obad. 
i. 18). 

Xow the Idumeans, as is well known, literally ceased 
to be a people, being so thoroughly subdued by John 
Hyrcanus as to be obliged to conform to the law of 
Moses, and to be, to the entire loss of their nationality, 
absorbed by the Jews. Thirty ruined towns, within 
three days' journey of the Red Sea, attest the former 
greatness of this people. The present condition of 
themselves and their country is one of utter desola- 
tion. Edom lies in the most direct route to India, but 
none "shall pass through it forever and ever," pre- 
dicted Isaiah (xxxiv. 10), and, "even the Arabs," says 
Keith, "are afraid to enter it, or conduct any within 
its borders." The people who visit it are described as 
a most savage and treacherous race, and so the prophet 
Malachi foretold, " Whereas Edom saith, we are impov- 
erished, but we will return and build the desolate 
places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, 
but I will throw down, and they shall call them the 



118 INFIDELITY KEBUKED. 

border of wickedness, and, the people against whom 
the Lord hath indignation forever" (Is. i. 4). The 
desolation of Edom is said to be perpetual (Jer. xlix. 
7-22), and travellers state that the whole country is a 
vast expanse of sand drifted up from the Red Sea. 

TYKE. 

" Tyre," says Volney, " was once the emporium of 
the world ; the theatre of an immense commerce and 
navigation, the nursery of arts and science, and the city 
of perhaps the most industrious and active people ever 
known." Situate at the entry of the sea, she was a 
merchant of the people for many isles. All nations 
were her merchants in all sorts of things. The ships 
of Tarshish did sing of her in the market, and she was 
replenished and made very glorious'in the midst of the 
seas (Ezek. xxvii.) It was of this mistress of princes 
that Ezekiel prophesied in the name of the Lord : " I 
will scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top 
of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in 
the midst of the sea " (Ezek. xxvi. 4, 5). How sin- 
gularly particular ! She was not only to be utterly de- 
stroyed, but the use that would be made of her site 
and the kind of men who would inhabit it were pointed 
out more than a thousand years before her complete de- 
struction. How precise the fulfilment! Shaw, in his 
book of travels, describes the port of Tyre as so choked 
up that the boats of the fishermen, who now and then 
come to the place and dry their nets upon its rocks and 
ruins, can hardly enter. Bruce describes the site of 
Tyre as "a rock whereon fishers dry their nets." But 
the testimony of the infidel, Volney, is more valuable. 
" The whole village of Tyre contains only fifty or sixty 



ELEVENTH LETTER. 119 

poor families, who live obscurely on the produce of 
their little ground and a trifling fishery." 

EGYPT. 

The prophecies relating to Egypt, and their fulfil- 
ment, demand the most attentive consideration. They 
were uttered when the Pharaohs were at their height 
of power. Then did Joel commence the mournful 
strain, "Egypt shall be a desolation" (Joel iii. 19). 
And Isaiah took it up : "The Egyptians will I give 
over into the hand of a cruel lord " (xix. 4). And 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, when the catastrophe was nearer, 
describe with terrible peculiarity, not only the judg- 
ments which would be inflicted in their days, but how 
Egypt should "be a base kingdom," and "there be no 
more a prince of the land of Egypt" (Jer. xlvi.; Ezek. 
xxx.) How accurately these threatenings have been 
accomplished is evident from the fact that that land has 
for two thousand years lost its independence, being sub- 
ject to foreign domination, and from the poverty and 
wretchedness of its inhabitants amidst the stupendous 
monuments of its ancient greatness. 

BABYLON. 

The fate of Babylon was foretold in the following 
words : — "And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the 
beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when 
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never 
be inhabited ; neither shall it be dwelt in from genera- 
tion to generation ; neither shall the Arabian pitch 
tents there ; neither shall the shepherds make their fold 
there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, 
and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and 



120 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. 
And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their 
desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant places, 
and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be 
prolonged" (Is. xiii. 19-22). The destruction of a 
city so extensive, containing magnificent buildings and 
surrounded by lofty walls, could have been effected 
suddenly only by an earthquake. It was the work of 
time, but every particular has been fulfilled. For cen- 
turies the very place where it once stood, the wonder 
of the world, was unknown. If modern travellers, 
who think they have discovered it, are right, it is an 
awful monument of the truth and "power of God. It 
is a mass of ruins, and nothing but ruins, covering the 
face of the country for miles, and amidst these they 
have heard the cry of wild beasts, and seen them roam- 
ing in their solitary domain. Other particulars con- 
nected with its doom are specified, that it should be be- 
sieged by the Medcs and Persians (Is. xxi. 2 ; Jer. 
li. 11); that the Euphrates, which flowed through the 
midst of it, should be dried up (Is. xliv. 27; Jer. 1. 
38 ; li. 36) ; that its gates should be open to Cyrus, its 
conqueror (Is. xlv. 1) ; that it should be taken dur- 
ing the dissipation and security of a feast (Jer. li. 39, 
57), and that the country around it should be turned 
into a marsh (Is. xliv. 22, 23). How exactly these 
things were accomplished we learn from the writings 
of Xenophon and Herodotus. 

NINEVEH. 

A still lamer citv, and no less signal as a monument 
of Divine power, was Nineveh, a place as ancient as 
Asshur, the son of Shem, and at one time nearly sixty 



ELEVENTH LETTER. 121 

miles round. This city abounded in wealth and pride. 
" I am," said she, " and there is none beside me" (Zeph. 
ii. 15). Jonah was therefore sent to foretell her ruin, 
and, though she repented, yet within a few years Na- 
hum was commissioned to repeat the message; a hun- 
dred years later still, but fifty before the city fell, Ze- 
phaniah again foretold its overthrow with the utmost lit- 
eral ness. Nor did the prediction fail. Pages might be 
filled in describing the gorgeous relics' of this mighty 
Nineveh. But the story, most interesting, is yet a 
melancholy one. There are inscriptions telling of 
world-wide conquests; there are sculptures which rep- 
resent the conduct, the success, the cruelties of war; 
there are royal pastimes depicted, the excitement of 
the chase, the luxury of banquets; there are the sym- 
bols of a strange worship — these and a thousand other 
particulars might be detailed. But all this grandeur 
and this glory had a disastrous end, shattered, not 
calmly and gradually sinking, but violently crushed, 
and the marks of the fire which devastated those lordly 
halls are yet apparent. The narrative of the destruc- 
tion of the city by the historian Diodorus Siculus reads 
more like history than prediction. And Lucian, who 
flourished in the second century after Christ, and was 
himself a native of that region, affirms that it had ut- 
terly perished, and that there was no footstep of it re- 
maining. "Thus saith the Lord God I 

have delivered him into the hand of the 

mighty ones of the heathen .... and strangers, the 
terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left 

him Upon his ruin shall all the fowls of the 

heaven remain, and all the beasts of the field shall be 
upon his branches. ... In the day when he went 



122 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

down to the grave I caused a mourning. ... I made 
the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I 
cast him down to hell with them that descend into the 

pit They also went down into hell with him, 

unto them that be slain with the sword, and i;hey that 
were his arm, that dwelt under his shadow in the 
midst of the heathen" (Ezek. xxxi. 10-17). Surely 
there is here in the history and fate of Nineveh a lesson 
read us, not only of the nothingness of man and his 
greatest works before the breath of the Almighty, but 
also of the strong corroborative evidence of the accurate 
truth of Holy Scripture. 

OF THE MESSIAH. 

The prophetical promise of Messiah, it should be 
observed, is quite different from what natural or na- 
tional prepossessions would have imagined. We 
might suppose the dim ideal of a future conqueror and 
king, with an anticipation that the destiny of Israel 
would have its highest prosperity under his sway. 
And prophecy accordingly describes the glories which 
should encompass One whose throne should be estab- 
lished in righteousness, and whose rule should com- 
prehend the kings of the earth. But along with such 
a description there runs continually a darker augury : 
from the very first intimation of a Seed of the woman, 
the bruising of his heel is prognosticated (Gen. iii. 15); 
and there is the constant witness to mysterious blood- 
shedding, and foreshadowings of unutterable sorrow to 
be endured, and shame, and rejection, and death, so 
that those who most anxiously looked for the fulfil- 
ment of the nation's, of the world's, hope, were most 
reluctant to admit that such humiliation could touch 



ELEVENTH LETTER. 123 

the promised One, and even in the anticipation of his 
reign they had shaped out a far diiferent sovereignty, 
unconscious of the great principle on which future 
spiritual glories are delineated in language taken from 
the earthly fortunes of their royal house. Now here 
is a whole system of prophetic declaration, foretelling 
what human thought would have been least likely 
to conceive, while the fulfilment came in a form so 
marvellously strange as to contradict all foregone con- 
clusions, and yet so satisfactory as to engage men for 
the truth of it to resign all they would naturally covet, 
and seal the belief of it with their blood. The accom- 
plishment of prophecy in the birth, the rejection, the 
death, the resurrection of Christ is complete. 

"When all is said which the most ingenious of scep- 
tics can say, observes an able writer, the picture of 
One guiltless Himself, suffering for the sins of His 
people, without complaint, and by His own death, 
as one numbered with the transgressors, bearing the 
iniquity of all, and making His soul an offering for 
sin, through whose stripes His people are healed 
(Isaiah liii. throughout), remains a most wonderful 
anticipation, fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, and in 
Him alone. It remains an anticipation, of which, 
even by itself, it is most difficult to explain the origin. 
And this most strange anticipation is fulfilled, after 
some centuries have passed with no semblance of its 
realization. It is fulfilled, but not until the popular 
mind in Israel has formed a most opposite ideal of the 
coming Saviour. And lastly, it is fulfilled in the most 
wonderful of all histories, of all characters, of all 
persons. 

If we admit that a Divine Teacher first created the 



124 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

expectation, and then in due time fulfilled it by the 
gift of His Son, all is explained. But what other 
supposition can account, first, for the hope so strangely 
awakened, then for the wonderful Person and history 
which fulfilled that hope? And this too when the 
desire and expectation of Israel had come to con- 
centrate itself almost exclusively upon the hope of the 
Conqueror, who should restore and enlarge the king- 
dom of David and of Solomon, and place the oppressors 
of Israel beneath its feet. 

DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE. 

We only add the prophecy of our Lord Himself 
concerning the time when the holy house of Jerusalem 
should be desolate (Matt, xxiii. 37, 38 ; Luke xix. 
41-44). 

Jesus had uttered in the temple, in the hearing of a 
mixed multitude, a pathetic lamentation over the dis- 
tress that awaited the Jewish nation. As He goes 
out of the temple towards the Mount of Olives, the 
usual place of His retirement, the disciples, struck with 
the expression He had used, " Behold your house is 
left unto you desolate/' as if to move His compassion 
and mitigate the sentence, point out to Him, while He 
passed along, the buildings of the temple, and the 
goodly stones and gifts with which it was adorned. 
The great temple which Solomon had built was de- 
stroyed at the time of the Babylonish captivity. 
Cyrus permitted the two tribes, who returned to 
Judea, to rebuild the house of their God. And this 
second temple was repaired and adorned by Herod the 
Great, who, having received the crown of Judea from 
the Romans, thought that the most effectual way of 



ELEVENTH LETTER. 125 

overcoming the prejudices, and obtaining the favor 
of the Jewish people, was by beautifying and enlarging, 
after the plan of Solomon's temple, the building which 
had been hastily erected in the reigns of Cyrus and 
Darius. It was still accounted the second temple, but 
was so much improved by the preparation which 
Herod made, that both Joseph us and the Eoman 
historians celebrate the extent, the beauty, and the 
splendor, of the building. And Joseph us mentions, 
in particular, marble stones of a stupendous size in the 
foundation, and in different parts of the building. 
The disciples, we may suppose, point out these stones, 
lamenting the destruction of such a fabric, or perhaps 
meaning to insinuate that it would not be easy for 
the hand of man to destroy it. But Jesus answered, 
" Verily, I say unto you, there shall not be left here 
one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown 
down." It is a proverbial saying, marking the com- 
plete destruction of the temple, and there would not, 
according to the general analogy of language, have 
been any impropriety in the use of it, if the temple had 
been rendered unfit for being a place of worship, 
although piles of stones had been left standing in the 
court. But, by the providence of God, even this 
proverbial expression was fulfilled, according to the 
literal acceptation of the words. Titus was most 
solicitous to preserve so splendid a monument of the 
victories of Rome, and he sent a message to the Jews 
who had enclosed themselves in the temple, that he 
was determined to save it from ruin. But they could 
not bear that the house of their God, the pride and 
glory of their nation, should fall into the hands of the 
heathen, and they set fire to the porticos. A soldier, 



126 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

observing the flames, threw a burning brand in at the 
window, and others incensed at the obstinate resistance 
of the Jews, without regard to the commands or threat- 
enings of their general, who ran to extinguish the 
flames, continued to set fire to different parts of it, 
and at length even to the doors of the holy place. 
"And thus," says Josephus, "the temple was burnt to 
the ground, against the will of Titus." After it was 
in this way rendered useless, he ordered the foun- 
dations, probably on account of the unusual size of the 
stones, to be dug up. And Rufus, who commanded 
the army after his departure, executed this order, by 
tearing them up with a ploughshare, so truly did 
Micah say of old, " Zion shall be ploughed as a field, 
and Jerusalem shall become heaps." 

To all these predictions the words of a modern writer 
are applicable: "Let now the infidel, or the sceptical 
reader, meditate upon these predictions. The priority 
of the records to the events admits of no question. 
The completion is obvious to every competent inquirer. 
These, then, are facts. We are called upon to account 
for these facts on rational and adequate principles. 
Is human foresight equal to the task? Enthusiasm? 
Conjecture? Chance? Political contrivance? If 
none of those, neither can any other principle that may 
be devised by man's sagacity account for the facts; 
then, true philosophy, as well as true religion, will 
ascribe them to the inspiration of the Almighty. Every 
effect must have a cause." 

Beyond all question, " the prophecy came not in the 
old time by the will of man, but holy men of God 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 



TWELFTH LETTER. 

Sra : The evidence of miracles now claims your 
attention. 

A MIRACLE DEFINED. 

We may define a miracle as an event contrary to the 
ordinary course of things, an effect for which natural 
causes are not alone sufficient : so that God must have 
interposed to suspend or modify the common laws of 
nature. Such event or effect produced by God's im- 
mediate touch or special assistance is intended as a 
proof of some particular truth or doctrine, or in attes- 
tation of the authority or divine mission of some par- 
ticular person. 

MIRACLES POSSIBLE. 

To the Pantheist, who denies the existence of a per- 
sonal God above the world — of God as the Creator 
and Ruler of the world, miracles, of course, are an 
impossibility. The same thing is true of the Deist, 
who maintains that since the creation the natural forces 
and laws which God established have been the efficient 
and determining cause of the course of the world, — 
God Himself having, as it were, retired to a position 
of rest, and only looking on, to see how the world, 
called into being by Him and ruled according to un- 
alterable laws, moves on. According to this theory, 
natural law is made to be even for the Creator an 
impassable barrier. But this view, says an eminent 

(127) 



128 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

writer, is at utter variance with the entire constitution 
of the world, of nature, and of the human heart. Na- 
ture is not a stiff, iron legalism, which absolutely ex- 
cludes the free ruling and interposition of God. It is 
by no means a mere mechanism, a nicely defined piece 
of clock-work, which winds itself up every day or 
year, but it resembles a well-ordered commonwealth, 
in which laws reign most surely, but such laws as leave 
play-room for the free-will. And so nature must be 
constituted, if it is to be the dwelling-place of man— 
of man endowed with free-will. Only when so con- 
stituted can it allow in it the exercise of a will that 
chooses among different possibilities and controls the 
event in nature to the attaining of its purposes. But 
if the free action of the human will is recognized, and 
room is found for it inside the laws of nature, why 
should just the Creator be excluded from such free 
acting and ruling ? As man in a peculiar way com- 
bines and disposes the forces in nature to his purposes, 
so that a result is produced which would never have 
been produced from the mere working together of the 
natural laws, so, only in an infinitely higher sense, God 
disposes the events in the world to His purposes. The 
entire constitution of the world, consequently, does not 
exclude the free ruling of God, the divine government 
of the world ; on the contrary, it is so devised as from 
the beginning to have that in view. "After all," as 
Dr. Charles Hodge has well observed, "the suspension 
or violation of the laws of nature involved in miracles 
is nothing more than is constantly taking place around 
us. One force counteracts another ; vital force keeps 
the chemical laws of matter in abeyance, and muscular 
force can control the action of physical force. When 



TWELFTH LETTER. 129 

a man raises a weight from the ground, the law of 
gravity is neither suspended nor violated, but counter- 
acted by a stronger force. The same is true as to the 
walking of Christ on the water, and the swimming of 
the iron at the command of the prophet." 

Then, again, as already hinted, the human heart, 
also, is so constituted that it must believe in the world- 
ruling God, as long as it believes itself. The human 
heart, as soon as it knows of a Creator and Lord of 
the world, cannot help praying to this God. That 
would be an absurdity and a contradiction, if the course 
of the world occurs according to unalterable laws, which 
form an insurmountable barrier even for God, if every- 
thing proceeds according to blind necessity. But the 
innermost voice of our own nature, of which we have 
the immediate assurance it cannot deceive, tells us that 
God's hands are not bound by natural law, but that He 
freely rules the world and directs all according to His 
counsel. Therefore we pray. Can that be delusion? 
Can this prayer-impulse, with which every man, even 
the denier of miracles, is involuntarily affected, when, 
trouble presses hard upon the soul, — can it be decep- 
tion, or as the catching of a drowning man at a straw? 
]So ! it is a remnant of the truth in the human heart, 
which, when the earnestness of life brushes from the 
eyes the cobwebs of idle theories, stands out clear and 
distinct before the spirit. This is the remnant of truth 
which, after every suppression, rises again, and bursts 
through all doubts, denials, and negations — the rem-, 
nant of truth, without which human life would be 
comfortless and hopeless, a lightless wandering in dark- 
ness. Where is there a praying heart, the expression 
of which would not with a thousand voices attest, 
9 



130 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

Prayers have their influence — they do not, as sound, 
die away in empty space? That could not be if the 
world's course were a mere mechanism. 

BELIEF IN THE SUPERNATURAL IS NATURAL. 

The universal belief in miracles and the marvellous, 
the ease with which such things are credited by men, 
the most enlightened as well as the unenlightened, 
statesmen, jurists, ecclesiastics, law -givers, sages — 
Socrates, Coke, Bacon, Hale, among numberless others 
— shows that a belief in the supernatural and the 
marvellous, instead of being contrary to the laws of 
the human mind, is rather in accordance with some 
law of our nature that holes for such interventions, 
and seeks and expects to be gratified. It may be 
added, also, that this proves that men would naturally 
expect such an intervention if a revelation were to be 
made to mankind. 

MORAL ENDS OF MIRACLES. 

" Whatever ends," says an excellent writer, " may 
be contemplated by the Deity for the laws of nature 
in reference to the rest of the universe — (a question in 
which we have as little information as interest) — we 
know that in respect to us, they answer discernible 
moral ends — that they place us, practically, under 
government, conducted in the way of rewards and 
punishment — a government of which the tendency is to 
encourage virtue and repress vice — and to form in us 
a certain character by discipline, which character our 
moral nature compels us to consider as the highest and 
worthiest object which we can pursue. Since, there- 
fore, the laws of nature have, in reference to us, moral 



TWELFTH LETTER. 131 

purposes to answer, which (as far as we can judge) 
they have not to serve in other respects, it seems not 
incredible that these peculiar purposes should oc- 
casionally require modifications of those laws in rela- 
tion to us, which are not necessary in relation to other 
parts of the universe." 



Mr. Hume, in his famous Essay, resolves the peculiar 
improbability of miracles, into the circumstance that 
they are "contrary to experience." His argument is, 
that no testimony ever has been produced, or can be 
produced, strong enough to countervail the universal 
experience of mankind against miraculous interposi- 
tion. This, however, is really a petitio principii. The 
experience is assumed to be uniform only upon testi- 
mony, so that testimony and experience cannot be thus 
pitted one against the other. Besides, the experience 
that is for miracles is destroyed, in order to make out 
experience against miracles. The experience of the 
Apostles and their contemporaries was, as they have 
left on record, that miracles had been witnessed by 
them. So that the matter comes to a question of testi- 
mony at last, whether the testimony of those who de- 
clare that miracles were within their experience is to 
be overborne by the testimony of those who maintain 
that experience is against them. And, let it be ob- 
served, these testimonies are not fairly balanced unless 
the affirmative of eye-witnesses is met by the negative 
of eye-witnesses too, present at the same time, who 
could say that no miracle could have been performed 
without their perceiving it, and that they did not so 
perceive it. Indeed, the experience relied on by the 



132 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

objector comes, when it is sifted, to be the experience 
of a single individual, who disbelieves what others 
tell him from their experience, because he has not seen 
it with his own eyes — has not had experience of it 
himself. The legitimate conclusion from such a prin- 
ciple would be the destruction of all belief save that 
which was forced on a man by the evidence of his 
own senses. His own experience is against a thousand 
things in every -day life, which he accepts without ques- 
tion upon another's credit, and acts accordingly. 

THE TIMING OF THE BIBLE MIRACLES. 

It is interesting, as well as profitable, to consider the 
timing of the miracles of the Bible. This thing grows 
on one 'who studies the record of them. As thus 
viewed, they are not a confused jumble of strange 
events. Each takes its place, its own place, and it is 
seen that it could not have come in at any other time. 
No two of these miracles can change places. The 
flood does its work at its own epoch. Abraham's 
attempted sacrifice is the event for that hour, and for 
no other. No Old Testament miracle could have 
occurred in New Testament times. Those that appear 
somewhat alike are so only in appearance. The New 
Testament miracles are exactly ordered as to the point 
where they occurred. They are progressive. The 
"raising of Lazarus" could not change places with the 
" turning of the water into wine," except by an entire 
destruction not only of the Gospel story but also of 
the harmony of Christ's own character. He could not, 
being the Christ He is, have invented this order, if 
He would be understood by men. Embosomed in a 
family known only in the social circles of a Galilean 



TWELFTH LETTER. 133 

province, it was exactly fit that His first miracle should 
be the consecration of domestic life. But the grand 
resurrection miracle was best done near Jerusalem, just 
when all teaching and all miracle were culminating 
at the close of His ministry. 

MIRACLES RECORDED BY CONTEMPORARIES. 

The miracles of the Bible were recorded by contem- 
poraries — Moses, the author of Exodus, and the Evan- 
gelists, who published their accounts when Christianity 
had its origin. These writers were certainly in a posi- 
tion to know the truth. Moses was the leader of Israel, 
taking part, indeed, having the command, in all things 
that were done. The Evangelists, too, were some of 
them Apostles, always about the person of Christ, pro- 
fessing to be eye-witnesses of what they told ; others were 
known to be trusted companions of the Apostles. They 
all had full means of information. Now, if untrue 
accounts of things arc put forth by contemporaries, 
there is every probability of their being at once contra- 
dicted. The children of Israel must have known 
whether they passed dry-shod through the Red Sea : 
they were inclined to murmur and resist Moses, so that, 
when he frequently referred to that event, we can 
hardly conceive of their acquiescing in what he said, 
if he had given a false coloring to an ordinary fact. 
Moreover, a deep impression seems to have been made 
on neighboring nations (Joshua ii. 9-11). It was their 
interest to have the falsehood, if falsehood there were, 
exposed, and yet, so far as we can discover, there was 
no attempt of this kind. Take, again, some of the 
remarkable events narrated in our Lord's history, such 
as the raising of Lazarus, the casting out of devils, 



134 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

the curing of the sick, the resurrection of Christ Him- 
self. We do not find generally the facts controverted, 
but explained away. Thus, when the people, sur- 
prised at what they saw, exclaimed, " It was never so 
seen in Israel," the Pharisees declared, " He casteth 
out devils through the prince of the devils" (Matthew 
ix. 33, 34). The Jewish council, also, when Lazarus 
was raised, acknowledged, " This man doeth many 
miracles " (John xi. 47), and, to stifle the impression 
made upon the public mind, they consulted about put- 
ting Lazarus to death (John xii. 10, 11). Certainly 
the simplest course would have been, if the fact re- 
ported were untrue, to expose its falsity, instead of 
trying to destroy the evidence of its truth. Later, in 
regard to the Apostles, there is the same confession that 
a notable deed was manifestly done which could not 
be denied (Acts iv. 16). An attempt, to be sure, was 
made to discredit our Lord's resurrection, but the shift 
resorted to only proved the difficulty in which the 
chief priests felt themselves (Matthew xxviii. 11-15). 
So, then, neither at the time when the events occurred, 
nor a few years afterwards when the histories were 
published, were the Jews able to impeach the truth of 
the recital. They had full opportunity of testing the 
facts, and they had certainly the will to convict, if they 
could, the Christians of mistake or imposture. But we 
see that for a series of years, through that whole gen- 
eration, the facts were fearlessly appealed to by Chris- 
tian teachers — appealed to under just the circumstances 
and in the very places where exposure of falsehood 
was most easy (Acts vi. 8 ; viii. 6, 7, 13 ; xiv. 3 ; Eom. 
xv. 19;Heb. ii. 4). 



TWELFTH LETTER. 135 

HISTORY OF MIRACLES GENUINE. 

Again, the history of the New Testament miracles is 
so closely interwoven with the rest of the narration, 
that any man who reads it may be satisfied that it could 
not have been inserted after the books were published. 
There are numberless allusions to the miracles even in 
those passages where none of them are recorded. The 
change upon the sentiments of the first disciples is 
truly inexplicable, unless we suppose the miracles to 
have been done in their presence. All, therefore, who 
received the Gospels and the Acts in early times, when 
they could easily examine the truth of the facts, may 
be considered as setting their seal to the miracles of 
Jesus and His Apostles, and the number of the first 
converts out of Judea and Jerusalem forms, in this way, 
a cloud of witnesses. Nor should we overlook that 
confirmation of the testimony of the Apostles, which 
is implied in the faith of all the first Christians. We 
mean the epistles to the different churches. Paul's 
First Epistle to the Thessalonians, for example (the 
genuineness of which has never been disputed), was 
written not twenty years after the ascension of Jesus, 
and in it he tells those to whom it was addressed, and 
in whose church it was to be read, that they had been 
converted to the Gospel by the miracles of those who 
preached it, and that the effect which this conversion 
had produced upon their conduct was talked of every- 
where. If these facts had not been known to the 
Thessalonians, would not the letter have been in- 
stantly rejected, and the character of him who wrote 
it have sunk into contempt? 



136 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

MIRACLES ADMITTED BY EARLY OPPONENTS OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

It is observable, also, that in the early ages, the 
fact that extraordinary miracles were wrought by Jesus 
and His Apostles, does not seem to have been generally 
denied by the opponents of Christianity. They seem 
always to have preferred adopting, the expedient of 
ascribing them to art magic and the power of evil 
spirits. This we learn from the New Testament 
itself, from such writings as the Sephen Toldoth Jeshu, 
from the Fragments of Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, 
Julian, etc., which have come down to us, and from the 
popular objections which the ancient Christian Apolo- 
gists felt themselves concerned to grapple with. We 
are not to suppose, however, that this would have been 
a solution, which, even in those days, would have been 
naturally preferred to a denial of the facts, if the facts 
could have been plausibly denied. On the contrary, 
it was plainly, even then, a forced and improbable 
solution of such miracles. For man did not commonly 
ascribe to magic or evil demons an unlimited pow T er, 
any more than we ascribe an unlimited power to mes- 
merism, imagination, and the occult and irregular 
forces of nature. 

INDIRECT TESTIMONY OF MIRACLES. 

Over and above the direct testimony of human 
witnesses to the Bible-miracles, we have also what may 
be called the indirect testimony of events confirming 
the former, and raising a distinct presumption that 
some such miracles must have been wrought. Thus, 
for example, we know, by a copious induction, that, 
in no nation of the ancient world, and in no nation of 



TWELFTH LETTER. 137 

the modern world unacquainted with the Jewish or 
Christian revelation, has the knowledge of the one 
true God as the Creator and Governor of the world, 
and the public worship of Him, been kept up by the 
mere light of nature, or formed the ground-work of 
such religions as men have devised for themselves. 
Yet we do find that, in the Jewish people, though no 
way distinguished above others by mental power or 
high civilization, and with as strong natural tendencies 
as others, this knowledge and worship was kept up 
from a very early period of their history, and, accord- 
ing to their uniform historical tradition, kept up by 
revelation attested by undeniable miracles. 

Again, the existence of the Christian religion, as the 
belief of the most considerable and intelligent part of 
the world, is an undisputed fact. It is also certain 
that this religion originated (as far as human means 
are concerned) with a handful of Jewish peasants, 
who went about preaching on the very spot where the 
events had occurred, that Jesus wrought miracles, and 
Himself rose from the dead. These statements, if 
false, could easily have been disproved, — why w 7 ere 
they not? How was it, that on the strength of them, 
these plain men, amidst persecution, too, gathered, 
before they died, large churches in the country where 
the facts were best known, and through Asia Minor, 
Greece, Egypt, and Italy ? 

BEALITY OF BIBLE MIRACLES. 

It is a strong evidence of the reality of the miracles 
of the Bible, that Science, so far as it has gone, has 
demonstrated that, if the facts occurred, they cannot 
be explained by the laws of nature, or that they could 



138 INFIDELITY KEBUKED. 

not have been wrought by any physical laws. " Very 
many things once deemed supernatural and miraculous 
have been shown to be the production of the ordinary 
laws of nature, and have thus been removed from the 
region of the marvellous, and have taken their places 
among things well understood as being in accordance 
with regular laws. Eclipses, meteors, comets, earth- 
quakes, the lightning, ignis fatwus — things that once 
alarmed mankind, have thus to a great extent taken 
their places in the ordinary course of events. iEscu- 
lapius is no longer worshipped as the god of medicine, 
for it is no longer supposed that there is any direct 
and supernatural divine agency in the healing art, nor 
are Ceres or Neptune worshipped as if supernatural 
divine power were manifested in the rearing of fruits, 
or in regulating the storm, or in the ebbing and the 
flowing of the waters of the sea. The magician has 
given way to the chemist working by established laws. 
Marvels and wonders, therefore, have been greatly 
limited and diminished by placing these events under 
the operation of the regular rules of nature. But 
Science has not advanced so far, as to explain the mira^ 
cles of the New Testament on any human principles, 
as it has in these matters, nor has it made any approxi- 
mation to it. Nay, just so far as it has gone it has 
demonstrated that those miracles cannot be explained 
on any principles known, or likely to be known, to 
science — gravitation, ' attraction, repulsion, electricity, 
galvanism, or the healing properties of vegetables or 
minerals. The chemist does not open the eyes of the 
blind by a touch, he does not heal the sick by a word, 
he does not raise the dead by the blow-pipe or by 
galvanism." 



TWELFTH LETTER. 139 

MIRACLES ATTEST A REVELATION. 

The question — "Are miracles sufficient to attest a 
revelation?" remains to be considered. There are 
those who maintain that there is no necessary connection 
between truth and power. Such persons admit mir- 
acles are possible, and suspect no intention in the 
Deity to deceive; but they cannot, they say, place con- 
fidence in the fidelity of His messengers, or, at least, 
they have no assurance that they would honestly de- 
liver their message, and religiously abstain from add- 
ing to it or taking from it. They might alter it to 
serve a particular purpose, and might employ the mi- 
raculous power by which they are invested to give au- 
thority and currency to imposture. The answer to 
this objection is obvious. It is God alone that can 
work miracles. This is a dictate of nature. Miracles, 
being supernatural works, can only be performed by 
Him to whom belongeth all power. We are not to 
suppose, for example, in the case of the Prophets and 
Apostles, that miraculous powers were communicated to 
them, to be properly their own, and to be exerted by 
them as they exerted their natural faculties. These 
men were merely instruments in the hands of God. 
They acknowledged themselves so to be. Moses says 
of himself, that he " stretched out his hand over the 
sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong 
east wind all that night and made the sea dry land, 
and the waters were divided." And " Why," said 
Peter and John, " look ye so earnestly on us, as though 
by our own power or holiness we had made this man 
walk ? The name of Jesus, through faith in his name, 
hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know." 
The power to work miracles being in GodV, and not in 



140 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

His servants, they could not abuse it, because, to speak 
strictly, they never possessed it. They were, we re- 
peat, merely the instruments o£ the miracles which 
God was pleased to work by His immediate power. 
Unless, therefore, we can believe that God would attest 
by miracles what is false, we. are forced to the conclu- 
sion that the miracles recorded in the Bible carry with 
them irresistible evidence that it is truth, and, not only 
so, but truth divinely revealed. 



THIRTEENTH LETTER. 

Sir : The aspect of the Bible to which I now desire 
to direct your attention is the support which it receives 
from collateral evidence. It is a fearless Book. It 
puts its incidental historical narratives by the side of 
ancient records, wherever these are found — on brick 
cylinders, graven in rocks, traced upon the pavements, 
carved upon obelisks, built into imperial structures, 
and it challenges comparison. No matter how other 
records have come to us, the Scripture puts its records 
beside them, asserts its truth, and waits for centuries 
for its vindication. It everywhere inserts its alleged 
facts into the plane of contemporaneous or nearly con- 
temporaneous events without the smallest hesitation, 
or preparation, or apology, or timidity, as though it 
was quite certain that none would or could challenge 
the accuracy of its representations. And how is this 
confidence sustained ? No wonder is it that, although 
the opponents of Christianity, from the time of Vol- 
taire to Colenso downwards, held that the books were 
the fraudulent inventions of a later age, and this as- 
sumption long reigned among the sceptics in England, 
France and Germany, yet when Layard began to dig, 
and Botta began to read, and Rawlinson began to ex- 
pound, this theory was abandoned, — the historic reality 
was admitted, and only the supernatural element de- 
nied. Let some particulars be noted. 

(141) 



142 INFIDELITY EEBUKED. 



ASSYRIAN TABLETS. 



F. Vigoureux, an able writer, in a work recently 
published in Paris, in referring to the great discovery 
of the Assyrian tablets, says : — " These tablets agree 
with Genesis in stating that the heavens existed before 
the earth ; that the latter was at first a chaos ; that out 
of this abyss proceeded the organized world. . . . 
There is also mention made of a revolt in heaven." 

Another eminent scholar, Mr. George Smith, of the 
Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum, 
who, when excavating at Nineveh, in 1873, discovered 
fragments of tablets which he afterwards recognized as 
a part of the Chaldean Story of the Creation, says :— 
" It here appears that the Babylonian Story of the 
Creation substantially agrees, as far as it is preserved, 
with the Biblical account. According to it there was 
a chaos of watery matter before the creation, and from 

this all things were generated There is also 

reference to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as 
in the Bible, he is made perfect and instructed in his 
various religious duties, but afterwards he joins with the 
dragon of the deep, the spirit of chaos, and offends 
against his God, who curses him and calls down on his 
head all the evils and troubles of humanity ." 

PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MAN. 

In relation to the primitive condition of man Hesiod 
speaks of " the Golden Age,when men lived the life of the 
gods — a life free from care and without labor or sor- 
row." Plato says " there was once an earth-born race 
whom the Deity himself tended and watched over." 
In the Zendavesta, Yima, the first Iranic king, " lives 
in a secluded spot, where he and his people enjoy un- 



THIRTEENTH LETTER. 143 

interrupted happiness." In the ancient books of the 
Chinese we read that " during the period of the first 
heaven the whole creation enjoyed a state of happiness; 
everything was beautiful, everything was good, all 
beings were perfect in their kind." Not only, accord- 
ing to Humboldt, is it " not difficult to detect through 
all the embellishments of the Hindu stories the tradi- 
tion of the descent of mankind from a single pair" but 
the Brahman and the Buddhist have preserved some 
recollections of the nature of the spot in which the 
first inhabitants of the earth were planted. 

THE SABBATH. 

The evidence of the Divine institution of the Sab- 
bath is very strong. The measuring of time by a day 
and a night is pointed out to the common sense of man- 
kind by the diurnal course of the sun. Lunar months 
and solar years are equally obvious to all rational 
creatures, so that the reason why time has been com- 
puted by days, months and years is readily given, but 
how the division of time into weeks of seven days, and 
this from the beginning, came to obtain universally 
among mankind no man can account for, without hav- 
ing respect to some impressions on the minds of men 
from the constitution and law of nature with the tradi- 
tion of a Sabbatical rest from the foundation of the 
world. Plain intimations of this weekly revolution 
of time are to be found in the earliest Greek poets. 
Hesiod, who lived about nine hundred years before the 
coming of Christ, says "the seventh day is holy." 
Homer, who flourished about the same period, charac- 
terizes it "The sacred day," and so does Callimachus, 
who flourished in the region of Ptolemy Euergetes, 



144 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

about seven hundred years later. In the old records 
of Assyria, in their account of the Creation, we also 
find the command to keep the seventh day holy, and 
to abstain from work on it. 

THE FALL OF MAN. 

The traditions of the Fall of Man are almost as 
widespread as the human family. The deep sense of 
the fact of man's expulsion from his first inheritance 
and the doctrines grounded on obscure traditions of the 
promised remedy are seen struggling, and now gleam- 
ing, now flashing through the mist of pantheism and 
producing the incongruities and gross contradictions of 
the Brahman mythology. In the Chinese mythology 
the serpent is a symbol of superior wisdom and power, 
and man's desire for knowledge, with the temptation 
of the woman, was his ruin. A very near resemblance 
is traceable between the Biblical record of man's first 
condition and the teaching of the Zendavesta. As 
there is a likeness in the history of Creation and in 
the description of Paradise, so there is a special simi- 
larity in the account of the Fall. According to the 
doctrine of Zoroaster, the first human beings, created 
by Ormuzd, the good principle, lived in a state of in- 
nocence in a happy garden with a tree Which gave 
them life and immortality, but Ahriman,the evil prin- 
ciple, assuming the form of a serpent, offered them the 
fruit of a tree which he had himself created ; they ate 
and became subject to evil and to a continual contest 
between light and darkness, between the good motions 
of Ormuzd and the evil suggestions of Ahriman. 



THIRTEENTH LETTER. 145 

THE DELUGE. 

The Scripture narrative of the deluge has remark- 
able confirmation, not only in the cuneiform account 
of it, but in the traditions of almost every nation. 
The following is found in a fragment of Berosus : 
" The god Kronos appeared to king Xisuthros, warned 
him of a destructive flood, and commanded him to 
write a comprehensive history of things and to bury 
it,- and to make a vessel in which he and his friends 
might be preserved. Xisuthros obeyed, and, when the 
flood had somewhat abated, he sent out some birds a 
first, second, and third time. As they did not return, 
Xisuthros, finding that the ground was dry, with some 
of his party quitted his vessel, which was stranded on 
the side of an Armenian mountain, offered sacrifices to 
the gods, and disappeared. The rest of their com- 
pany, as their friends did not return, also left the ship, 
and were admonished by a voice from heaven to repair 
to Babylon to dig up the writing that was buried, and 
to live piously." 

Again, in China there is a tradition that a certain 
Fak-ke was preserved from an overwhelming deluge. 
He had a wife, three sons, and three daughters, and 
from them the world was replenished with people. 
There is also an Indian story, in various forms. 
Brhama, in one, is stated to have warned Manu, a 
righteous person, to build a ship, and place in it seven 
holy beings, and all kinds of seeds, as a flood was im- 
minent. The ship is ultimately made fast to a lofty 
summit of the Himalaya mountains, and Manu is the 
parent of a new race of men. Nor are such traditions 
unknown in America. Coxcox or Terpi is said to have 
preserved his wife and children, with certain animals 
10 



146 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

and grain, during a deluge, in a large vessel. When 
the waters were abating he sent out various birds, of 
which one alone, the humming-bird, returned with a 
leafy branch. Coxcox landed near the mountain Col- 
li uacan. 

It is impossible to refer here to more of these tradi- 
tionary stories, which have been handed down in 
widely-separated regions of the earth, preserved some- 
times in pictorial representations, or corroborated by 
coins — as in the medal struck in Apamea in Phrygia, 
about the time of the Roman emperor Septimius Sev- 
erus, in the third century after Christ, which not only 
commemorates the deluge, but exhibits Noah's name 
— interwoven with religious observances, or worked 
into the literature of a people, found to exist among 
those least civilized, and those most so. Is it possible 
that so many independent structures of fancy, modified 
indeed according to circumstances, but identical in the 
main fact, could exist, if there were no foundation, if 
there were not really some great event which has 
impressed itself through all the generations of man- 
kind? 

TOWER OF BABEL. 

In regard to the Tower of Babel, the account given 
by the Chaldee historian Berosus, as we learn from the 
extracts in Eusebius and Polyhistor, agrees so remark- 
ably with Genesis that Tuck and Kenan have affirmed 
that he borrowed from the Hebrew records ; but this 
is disproved by the Babylonish monuments which, al- 
though much mutilated, still contain enough to show 
that Berosus drew from the veritable records of his 
own country. And the mighty ruin of Birs Nimroud 
or Borsippa is now verified by the researches of M. 



THIRTEENTH LETTER. 147 

Oppert as the site of the famous edifice which once 
sought to defy the King God. Even Schrader, who 
deems Genesis a legend, admits this. And the mean- 
ing given by Genesis as " confusion " is justified not 
only by Polyhistor and Abydenus but by Chaldean 
tradition. 

ROUTE OF ISRAELITES IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Professor Dawson, Principal of McCall University, 
Montreal, in a late lecture on the explorations made 
recently by the Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of 
Sinai, and the route of the Israelites after crossing the 
Red Sea, which were conducted by Captain Wilson 
and eight scientific English officers, said : "The Israel- 
ites made their march over three thousand years ago, 
and these surveys prove that the Book of Exodus was 
minutely accurate in every particular." The Rev. 
Canon Tristram, in a recent address before the British 
and Foreign Bible Society, also said: "In all those 
engineer officers who have worked for the Palestine 
Exploration Fund — in all those men who, like Pro- 
fessor Palmer and others, have gone through the desert 
of the Exodus — what do we see? There is not one 
man who, whatever views he may have held when he 
first went out there, has gone and given himself hon- 
estly to the work of discovering that country, who has 
not come back and put it under his seal that God is 
true, and that it is impossible that the history of the 
Exodus and the early history of Israel can be any- 
thing but minute historical detail. Is it for nothing 
that, where once we only knew 450 names of places in 
Palestine, we now have 2,770 names ? Is it for nothing 
that there is scarcely a single town mentioned in Joshua 



148 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

that we cannot now, with entire confidence, identify ? 
I think that we should all feel that the utterances of 
one stone are worth all the speculations of philosophy." 
Mr. Tristram, in the same address, said : " You cannot 
go to the British Museum and look at that black obe- 
lisk of Tiglath Pileser, or the records of Sennacherib, 
you cannot go to Paris and gaze on that Moabite stone, 
you cannot read those cuneiform inscriptions, or read 
the translations, without seeing that it is impossible 
now to question the harmony of the Word of God 
with profane history as far back as history goes." 

CITIES OF BASHAN. 

It is said that in one small district of Bashan there 
were threescore great cities "fenced with high walls, 
gates, and bars," and sceptics have been ready to deride 
the credulity of such as would receive the statement as 
a literal fact. But travellers (among others, Dr. Porter, 
author of the Giant Cities of Bashan) have visited the 
region, and have found the cities, desolate, it is true, 
but still standing in their extraordinary grandeur, the 
massive walls there, the streets with their ancient pave- 
ment unbroken, the houses complete and habitable, as 
if finished only yesterday, and even the very doors and 
window-shutters in their places. 

NEBUCHADNEZZAR AND BELSHAZZAR. 

For a long time it had been questioned whether such 
a king as Nebuchadnezzar ever reigned. His name, it 
was said, did not appear in Herodotus, and objectors, 
ready to avail themselves of every opportunity of carp- 
ing at the sacred volume, if they did not deny the 
existence of the conqueror, at least insinuated that a 



THIRTEENTH LETTER. 149 

petty satrap had been magnified into a great king. 
Now bricks in abundance have been disinterred in- 
scribed with the mighty Nebuchadnezzar's name, and 
proving that there was indeed foundation for the 
boast that it was he that had built and adorned his 
magnificent capital (Dan. iv. 30). Yet more serious 
doubt was expressed in regard to Belshazzar, and con- 
sequently the narrative of his feast, and the awful 
sign which interrupted it, was pronounced a fable. 
But it is now distinctly proved by the discovery of 
unquestionable records that a sovereign of that name 
was associated in power with his father during the last 
days of Babylon's independence. 

Paul's voyage and shipwreck. 

Take, again, the account of the great Apostle's voy- 
age and shipwreck. A recent English writer has care- 
fully investigated the localities; he has ascertained the 
character of the prevalent winds; he has calculated, 
after communication with experienced naval officers, 
the rate of drift and the direction a vessel would 
naturally take, and he finds the statement of Scripture 
minutely accurate. "A searching comparison," says he, 
"of the narrative with the localities where the events, 
so circumstantially related, are said to have taken 
place, with the aids which recent advances in our 
knowledge of the geography and the navigation of the 
eastern part of the Mediterranean supply, accounts for 
every transaction, clears up every difficulty, and ex- 
hibits an agreement so perfect in all its parts as to 
admit of but one explanation — namely, that it is a 
narrative of real events, written by one personally 
engaged in them." 



150 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

» 

TESTIMONY OF A SCHOLAR. 

It would be easy, Sir, to fill pages with particular 
examples of corroborative evidence of the truthfulness 
of Scripture derived from coins, tombs, ancient seals 
and monuments, which God's providence has uncov- 
ered to give living testimony of what occurred in an- 
cient times. A most eminent scholar, after a careful 
survey of antiquarian research and discovery, says with 
representative voice, — " The monumental records of 
past ages — Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, 
Phoenician, — the writings of historians who have based 
their history on contemporary annals, as Manetho, 
Berosus, Dius, Menander, Nicolas of Damascus, the 
descriptions given by eye-witnesses of the Oriental 
manners and customs, the proofs obtained by modern 
research of the condition of art in the time and coun- 
try — all combine to confirm, illustrate and establish 
the veracity of the writers who have delivered to us 
the history of the chosen people." 

TESTIMONY OF RENAN. 

Even unbelieving Renan feels it necessary to confess 
— " The striking accord between the texts and the 
places, the marvellous harmony of the Bible ideas with 
the country which serves them for a frame, was to me 
like a revelation." Strong as is such testimony, it is 
not too strong. Nor Egypt, nor Phoenicia, nor Judea, 
nor the plains of Shinar, nor Young, nor Hamilton, 
nor Lewis, nor Layard, nor Rawlinson, nor Champol- 
lion, nor Botta, nor Lepsius, nor Bunsen, nor private 
explorers with their freedom and numbers, nor public 
commissioners going forth with public resources at 
command — none nor all of these have furnished a 



THIRTEENTH LETTER. 151 

single well-established fact against the Bible history. 
On the contrary, they have furnished immense corrob- 
oration, — corroboration which confirms in the clearest 
and strongest manner the truthfulness of those records 
which form the basis of the Christian system." 

THE BIBLE THE TOURIST'S BEST HAND-BOOK. 

Such, indeed, Sir, is the minute faithfulness of the 
Bible, in all things connected with external scenes, that 
it forms the best possible hand-book of the tourist, and 
no candid man in traversing Biblical countries and ob- 
serving their geography, botany and manners and cus- 
toms can escape the conviction that its writers lived 
among and were perfectly familiar with the scenes 
which they describe. Hills and mountains, springs 
and brooks are just as Scripture has described them, 
and articles of food are still used such as Scripture 
mentions. Every great feature of the scene remains 
and presents itself to the eye of the modern traveler 
precisely as they were described by Moses and David, 
the prophets and apostles, and, with the exception of 
the cities and towns, which have changed or disap- 
peared in the progress of time, one knows that he is 
looking upon the very scenes which their eyes beheld, 
and which they describe so faithfully that they are 
recognized at once after so many centuries have passed 
away. The land of the prophets and the wondrous 
people, the land of signs and wonders, remains as the 
writers of the Bible saw and described it. 

With such facts as have now been presented the 
truthfulness of sacred history must be admitted, or all 
ancient history must be abandoned at once as false. 
To deny the credibility of the Old Testament writers 



152 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

is not now to reject the Bible only, but it is to declare 
the State records of every ancient empire false. 

HISTORICAL AND DOCTRINAL TRUTHFULNESS 
BLENDED. 

Nor must it be forgotten that the proof of the his- 
torical accuracy of the writers of the Scriptures in the 
circumstances in which they wrote carries with it the 
truthfulness of their doctrines, unless we are prepared 
to believe that a perfect historical accuracy is connected 
with hypocrisy and dishonesty in doctrine. The fun- 
damental doctrines of the Bible are all, more or less, 
connected with and woven into the facts of history, 
and, in many instances, in such a way as that the proof 
of the reality of the facts recorded involves the truth 
of the doctrine. Nearly every great doctrine has been 
either developed in or illustrated by some historic 
event, upon which we can as fully and as safely exer- 
cise the powers of our mind in eliciting and testing 
truth as we can upon the facts of science. And, it 
may be added, though the Bible has in every age since 
the completion of the Canon, been subjected to the 
scrutiny of historical criticism and been assailed with 
every weapon which ingenuity could invent or an 
exhaustive scholarship rake up, it has uniformly come 
forth, in the judgment of impartial men, triumphant. 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 

Sir : I ask your earnest attention to the character of 
Christ. 

Jesus Christ is an historical fact. The mythical 
theory of His existence is utterly baseless. Human 
nature never literally creates — its pictures are new 
combinations of existing objects, but the portraiture of 
the character and life of Jesus given in the Gospels is 
such, that, if looked at simply as an ideal picture, it 
defies explanation as a happy combination, a marvel- 
lous union, of any known features or virtues, ever seen 
before on earth. 

OUT OF THE PLANE OF HUMAN NATURE. 

Taking the ensemble of qualities which make up this 
character, together with the originality and wonderful 
peculiarities of the form in which it is presented, the 
entire phenomenon is manifestly out of the plane of 
human nature. Neither in Greek, nor Roman, nor 
Jewish human nature can we discover the elements 
which could have evolved so peculiar a creation. On 
the supposition that Jesus of Nazareth never actually 
existed, it is not within the range of rational belief 
that the idea of such a being was formed in that country, 
that age, and in the minds of such men as the Evangel- 
ists are held to have been, and as in point of mental 
endowment and culture and social rank they certainly 

(153) 



154 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

were. These men, to whom this painting must be 
ascribed, bound as they were by the prejudices of their 
nation, were, as far as we can judge, as utterly incapa- 
ble of imagining or executing such a portrait as the 
merest dauber of emulating the divinest performances 
of a Raphael or a Michael Arigde- And the moral 
transformation implied in the supposition that these 
plebeian Jews invented what they have drawn involves 
no greater anomaly in human nature than to suppose 
them endowed with the extraordinary intellectual quali- 
ties which so unique and so wonderful a portrait de- 
mands, a portrait which it is inconceivable that even 
one should successfully execute, and yet which no less 
than four have dared to essay. 

HIS CHARACTER NOT INVENTED. 

"It is,' 7 says an excellent writer, "a just and preg- 
nant remark of Neander that the image of Christ 
could never have sprung from the consciousness of sin- 
ful humanity, but must be regarded as the reflection 
of the actual life of such a Being." Literature, con- 
fessedly, shows no parallel to it. The Hebrew mind, 
uninventive, bigoted, full of prejudice and of pride, 
desiring intensely secular advancement, must have seen 
and felt this spiritual splendor before it could portray 
it. Indeed, any genius that has appeared among men 
must have been in like manner illumined before it 
could have written or suggested the gospels. Homer 
never sang, in his resounding epic verse, such a singular 
combination of properties and parts, such a marvellous 
and unparalleled person as this. Plato, the most co- 
pious of all Grecian thinkers, the highest in philosoph- 
ical and moral intuition, the most affluent in culture, 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 155 

never delineated and never imagined such a character. 
His ideal good man is weak and lifeless in comparison. 
The supposition that the rude and untrained Hebrew 
fishermen — not poets at all, nor philosophical artists; 
not by nature saintly men, nor gifted with extraordi- 
nary spiritual insight, but common in fibre, engaged 
from childhood in manual occupations and pervaded 
with the meanness of sentiment and of sympathy 
which belonged to the Jew — that they imagined this, 
each for himself, and knit their fancies into the com- 
pactness of this personal life, making its childhood so 
lovely and its manhood so majestic, and then told of 
it, each in his own plain way, without having seen it, 
leaving it to be the wonder of the world and the su- 
perlative marvel of history, while still all unreal, it is 
too incredible to ask refutation !" " It would," as has 
well been said, " have taken a Jesus to forge a Jesus." 

The history of Christ, then, is not a work of fiction. 
Tiie antiquity of the records being granted — and it is 
granted at this day by all who have seriously investi- 
gated the subject, and who, on the ground of scholar- 
ship and of intellectual and moral competency, are en- 
titled to consideration, — it must be admitted He is a 
real historical personage — as real as Csesar or Alexan- 
der. We can make nothing of the history of nations, of 
opinions, of philosophy, of the world, of anything in 
the past, if this is denied. All history is connected 
with that life; all history, for eighteen hundred years 
at least, turns on that life. The fact that he lived and 
founded the Christian religion is recognized by Jose- 
phus, by Tacitus, by Pliny. It is not denied by Cel- 
sus, by Porphyry, by Julian, as it would have been if 
it could have been done. It is not denied by Mr. Gib- 



156 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

bon, but is assumed in his labored argument every- 
where. It is not denied by Strauss, it is not denied by 
Renan. How, indeed, could it be ? Beyond all ques- 
tion, the first and last impression which the Gospels ir- 
resistibly make upon every fair-minded reader is that 
of the artless simplicity and honesty of the writers. 
We may contest their learning, critical sagacity and 
worldly wisdom, but it is impossible to deny their good 
faith; it shines forth from every line; it is even 
strengthened by the many discrepancies in minor de- 
tails, and it was sealed with their own blood. Goethe, 
as good a judge of literary productions as ever lived, 
deliberately said : " I consider the Gospels as thor- 
oughly genuine, for there is reflected in them a ma- 
jesty and sublimity which emanated from the person 
of Christ, and which are as truly divine as anything 
ever seen on earth." 

FREE FROM OSTENTATION. 

The character of Christ was unostentatious. We 
should naturally suppose that such a personage, setting 
up the most astounding claims and proposing the most 
extraordinary work, would surround himself with ex- 
traordinary circumstances. We should expect some- 
thing uncommon and striking in his look, his dress, his 
mode of speech, his outward life, and the train of his 
attendants. But the very reverse is the case. His 
greatness is singularly unostentatious, modest and 
quiet; far from repelling the beholder, it attracts and 
invites him to familiar approach. Without possessions, 
without patronage, without any auxiliary of power or 
worldly greatness, He, nevertheless, shines with a lustre 
which many ages have not dimmed. From the frame 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 157 

of this lowliness, that countenance of moral loveliness 
looks upon us with a mysterious and imperative fasci- 
nation. It is manifest that the delineation owes not a 
single grace to the external charms. If we examine 
the progress of the unvarnished narrative we detect no 
semblance of display. The very suspicion of human 
glory is precluded from every beholder's mind. His 
public life never moved on the imposing arena of sec- 
ular heroism, but within the humble circle of every- 
day life, and the simple relations of a son, a brother, a 
citizen, a teacher, and a friend. Except when some 
great misery calls for the breaking forth of hidden 
power, Christ pursues the noiseless tenor of his way in 
a manner so natural and unobtrusive that we almost 
forget the public offices which He is afterwards seen 
to assume. Retirement and even secrecy cause some 
of his most wonderful actions. 

FREE FROM SUPERSTITION. 

Jesus was free from superstition. He lived in an age 
of superstition. The most enlightened philosophers 
were unable to free themselves entirely from the dread- 
ful incubus. The Jewish teachers were no exception. 
And, what was worse, they had in addition laid upon 
themselves the yoke of the oral law. They were in 
abject slavery to the tradition of the elders, which, 
with its ten thousand burdensome requirements, re- 
sulted in intolerable bondage to conscientious minds, 
while in those less earnest the result was formalism and 
hypocrisy. From all this Jesus was free, and taught 
others to be free also. 



158 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

NOT ASCETIC. 

Though Christ is the most unworldly of beings, yet 
there is no ascetic sourness or repugnance, no misan- 
thropic distaste in His manner, as if He were bracing 
Himself against the world to keep it off. The more 
closely He is drawn to other worlds the more fresh and 
susceptible is he to the humanities of this. The little 
child is an image of gladness, which His heart leaps 
forth to embrace. The wedding and the feast and the 
funeral have all their cord of sympathy in His bosom. 
Some truly pious persons are apt to look with contempt 
on certain classes. It is not easy to treat respectfully 
the fickle multitude with their follies and spites, the 
underhanded with their pretence of fairness, the great 
men who are small, the ignorant who are proud, the 
friend who becomes an enemy. But Christ, though He 
looked straight into souls, and, of course, saw a great 
deal of wickedness, never hated man. He hated sin, 
hated it as no man ever did, but this He could do with- 
out having any feeling of malice against the sinner. 
He honored all because of their relation to God and 
immortality. He had no feeling of caste. He could 
mingle with publicans and sinners in order to benefit 
them. The poor and illiterate children of God He 
welcomed as warmly as He did the rich and the edu- 
cated disciples. 

WITHOUT PREJUDICE. 

Jesus was free from prejudice. It is almost impos- 
sible for ordinary men to escape being tinged with the 
views and feelings of their countrymen, — it is, indeed, 
considered a virtue not to be ashamed of one's birth- 
place, and it is remarkable how much geography has 
to do with the opinions of men. It is impossible for 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 159 

us to escape the influence of our little town. There 
was, however, no provincialism about Christ. The 
resident of the obscure village of Nazareth, who had 
never been more than seventy miles from home, was 
as thorough a cosmopolitan as the best traveled man 
of any age. Born a Jew, He is remarkably free from 
the national prejudices which ran in the very blood of 
those favorites of heaven. His character and the tone 
of His ethical system are uncongenial with the place 
in which He lived. As a consequence of this univer- 
sal world-spirit, He is natural in all the relations 
which He assumes. 

FREE FROM EXCITEMENT. 

Freedom from excitement is another trait of the char- 
acter of Christ. His life was marked by courage, 
power, majesty, but by nothing of the feverish and the 
eruptive. He did not dash off with impetuosity one 
hour, and sink into languor the next. He was earnest 
without being fierce, and calm without being dull. 
No one could think of Him as a mere religious enthu- 
siast. He is always master of Himself, and master of 
the situation in which He may be placed. His miracles 
here furnish a striking illustration. Amid these won- 
derful works He always maintains self-restraint and 
perfect poise. We never see Him standing for a mo- 
ment in surprise before them. They seem to be per- 
fectly natural to Him. He does them apparently as 
easily and as naturally as we perform our every-day acts 
of interference with the general laws of nature. The 
disciples, upon their first exercise of the Master's power, 
came running back in excitement, rejoicing that the 
spirits were made subject unto them. Jesus does not 



160 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

share their astonishment, but calms and hallows their 
thoughts by reminding them of a better reason for their 
joy. He never seems to have mistaken His power, to 
have attempted more than He could perform, or to 
have been astonished at His own success, when all men 
marvelled at Him. " Remarkable as was the character 
of Jesus/' says Dr. Channing, "it was distinguished by 
nothing more than by calmness and self-possession. 
This trait pervades His other excellences. How calm 
was His piety ! Point me, if you can, to one vehement, 
passionate expression of His religious feelings. Does 
the Lord's Prayer breathe a feverish enthusiasm? The 
habitual style of Jesus on the subject of religion, if in- 
troduced into many churches of His followers at the 
present day, would be charged with coldness. The 
calm and the rational character of His piety is par- 
ticularly seen in the doctrine which He so earnestly 
inculcates, that disinterested love and self-denying ser- 
vice to our fellow-creatures are the most acceptable 
worship we can offer to our Creator. His benevolence, 
too, though singularly earnest and deep, was composed 
and serene. He never lost the possession of Himself 
in His sympathy with others ; was never hurried into 
the impatient and rash enterprises of an enthusiastic 
philanthropy, but did good with the tranquillity and 
constancy which mark the providence of God." 

UNCONCERNED ABOUT MYSTERIES. 

Jesus was never troubled in relation to mysteries. 
" Men who have reached any maturity of intellect are 
troubled more or less with the mysterious things which 
belong to the divine system. There are seeming con- 
fusions that we cannot harmonize, and apparent con- 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 161 

tradictions that we cannot reconcile. The mind there- 
fore wanders as one who has lost his way, and doubts 
by reason of the strange things which strike the soul. 
Wrong feelings arise in the heart ; perplexity torments 
the understanding; unhappiness eats into the troubled 
spirit. Now, nothing of this experience is seen in 
Christ, He seems to have been able to look over the 
system of God, finding nothing in that system that 
threw Him into a state of doubt. Where to us there 
is intricacy, to Him there was plainness. We never 
find Him attempting to explain away the dark features 
of the creation, as some wise men have attempted to do, 
hoping by such means to find rest. His high attitude 
of life, standing on the mountain summit of being, 
while we are away down in the valleys below, enabled 
Him to take in a multitude of particulars, which, if we 
could behold them, would quiet us, even .as they 

quieted Him." 

CONSISTENT. 

Another characteristic of Christ is His freedom from 
inconsistency. There is no man, however wise and 
good, who is not more or less inconsistent, who does 
not occasionally fall out of his role, yield to the pres- 
sure of circumstances, allow himself to be carried away 
by passion or excitement, betray his native weakness, 
falter in the path of virtue. But Jesus is the same 
in doctrine and conduct from the beginning to the 
close, before friend and foe, in private and public life, 
in action and suffering. He had never to retract a 
word, never to regret a deed, never to ask the pardon 
of God or man. " In the working of His intellect, He 
is never at fault. There is no false statement, no false 
reasoning. He does not find it necessary to change His 
11 



162 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

opinions by reason of new light. In the working of 
his feelings, there is no wrong movement. The right 
emotion always appears in the right circumstances. 
The feelings are neither too fast nor too slow. Their 
measure and variety are just as they should be. In 
the working of His will, there is no hindering power. 
It always has a ready and fixed determination for 
righteousness. The entire will, and not a part of it, 
is set for that which is good." The entire history of 
Christ shows not the slightest disposition on His part 
to be an extremist. He is, as has well been remarked, 
never a radical, never a conservative. He will not 
allow His disciples to deny Him before kings and 
governments; He will not let them renounce their 
allegiance to Caesar. He exposes the oppressions of 
the Pharisees in Moses' seat, but, encouraging no fac- 
tious resistance, says, " Do as they command you." 
His position as a reformer was universal ; according to 
his principles almost nothing, whether in church or 
state, or in social life, was right, and yet He is thrown 
into no antagonism against the world. With a reform 
to be carried in almost everything, He is yet as quiet 
and cordial, and as little in the attitude of bitterness 
or impatience, as if all hearts were with Him, or the 
work already done, so perfect is the balance of His 
feeling, so intuitively moderated is it by a wisdom not 
human. 

Let us glance now, Sir, at the positive elements of 
the character of Jesus. 

BENEFICENT. 

" He went about doing good." He wiped away 
many a tear; He made many human hearts glad, and 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 163 

many others connected with them felt the benignant 
and genial influence of His earthly ministry. He re- 
lieved and removed a great amount of physical suffer- 
ing ; He created and planted in the world a great 
amount of physical happiness. He devoted Himself 
to the work of blessing man, and in both regions of 
His life, in His acts and in His words, in the healing, 
spiritual truths which He imparted, and in the un- 
numbered material kindnesses which He bestowed, we 
discover one reigning motive — love of man, deep, 
enduring, redeeming love. It was seen from the first 
that His awful powers were uniformly beneficent; that 
He came, not to destroy men's lives, but to save them; 
that He used Omnipotence to bless, but never to hurt. 
Men saw Him clothed with power over disease, and 
even over death, able to cast forth spirits, or to still 
the sea, and yet accessible, full of sympathy; the lofty 
Patriot, the tender Friend, the patient Counsellor, 
shedding tears, at times, from a full heart, and ever 
ready with a wise and gentle word for all, so unaf- 
fected and gentle that children drew round Him with 
a natural instinct, and even worldly hardness and vice 
were softened before Him ; and this contrast of trans- 
cendent power, and perfect humility, made them feel 
that He was indeed the head of the kingdom of God 
among men. The entire history of His life is the 
history of active and diffusive benignity. 

SELF-DENYING. 

Self-denial marked the career .of Christ. Too legi- 
bly are the characters written on the fallen heart and 
on a fallen world, — "All seek their own." Selfishness 
is the great law of our degenerate nature. When the 



164 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

love of God was dethroned from # the soul, self vaulted 
into the vacant seat, and there, in some one of its Pro- 
tean shapes, continues to reign. Jesus stands out a 
grand, solitary exception in the midst of a world of 
selfishness. His entire life was one abnegation of self, 
a beautiful, living embodiment of that charity which 
"seeketh not her own." There is not an instance in 
which He appears to have proposed His own private, 
separate good as the end either of His actions or suffer- 
ing. Never were His miracles mere ostentations of 
power, but always expressions of goodness. Love ac- 
tuated His itinerary, on foot, over the rough hills and 
torrid plains of Palestine, and flowed out to the poor 
and the dying in streams of relief. And it was love 
that was personified and held up to the view of angels 
and of God on the "place of skulls" and the cursed 
cross. 

PATIENT. 

Patience forms another element. Even good men, 
oftentimes, not seeing the immediate fruit of their 
labors and schemes, grow weary in well-doing. Jesus 
had the divine power to wait for results. He had the 
patience of true enthusiasm. He had placed before 
his mind the attainment of a kingdom as extensive as 
the human race, but He does not delude Himself or 
those around Him with imagined pictures of speedy 
results. He says that the perfection of His work will 
be like the growth of the mustard seed, or the working 
of leaven. When he sees men rejecting the truth and 
himself hastening to an ignominous death, he does not 
feel that his life has been a failure, but with divine 
constancy says : "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw 
all men unto me." There is no impatience or despon- 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 165 

dency in him. He does not rail at the hardness of the 
human heart and the ingratitude of his fellow-men, nor 
does his heart sink when he contemplates the gigantic 
social evils which afflict the race, but swells with hope 
that a better day will come, 

CHARACTER SYMMETRICAL. 

Another remarkable element in the character of 
Jesus was symmetry. We find in it the union of all 
graces that are severed in others. We see in Him the 
tenderness of woman, with the strength of manhood, 
the love of friends, the love of His Jewish race, yet 
the largest kinship with every form of humanity, 
every lot of suffering, the heart seemingly born for the 
still happiness of home, yet the self-surrender of the 
martyr. His w r as a super-human completeness or 
roundness of mind. His supreme loyalty to the Father 
in Heaven did not exclude His loyalty to the magis- 
trate on earth. How beautifully he combined a con- 
templative with an active life ! He was the busiest of 
men, and yet the most devotional. His career was 
marked by ceaseless exertion and needful spiritual ces- 
sation and repose; the outer life all given to God and 
man ; the private, inner life, sedulously cared for and 
nurtured. Not only have we the imperial intellect in 
Him, but also its full peer in the imperial heart. No 
other man has ever existed who w r as perfectly equal, 
an evenly balanced unit in his powers of thought and 
emotion, much less the highest possible type of both. 
Our master human minds generally exhaust themselves 
completely in the utterance of great thoughts, because 
the thinking faculty absorbs their whole being. But, 
while their whole being becomes swallowed up in 



166 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

thought, their heart is correspondingly impoverished. 
To this Jesus is the one mighty exception. Both these 
declarations are true, namely, that no man ever reached 
His power of thinking, and yet, no man ever readied 
His power of loving. Love and light never had such a 
blending as in Him. After a life of ineffable luminous- 
ness he died, actually imploring forgiveness on His 
murderers. The very thought is stupendous, while the 
feeling is unfathomable. When He speaks He casts 
His eye into the infinite heights of revelation, and we 
soar into its sublimities after Him, but when He smiles 
He presses us to His bosom, and His tender affection 
makes our hearts glow while we are folded in His arms. 

FIDELITY. 

The character of Jesus was marked by unswerving 
fidelity. With terrible severity, although seldom, He 
exposed and denounced evil. Friendless and power- 
less as He seemed to be — as in His earthly relations He 
certainly was — He did not repress on necessary occa- 
sions a burning indignation, and, if a voice of thunder 
was required to awaken and alarm that generation, 
such a voice was lifted up and resounded through the 
length and breadth of the land. And yet this severity 
was always free from everything like human passion, 
and only lurked in His heart of love as the lightning 
lurks amid the warm, soft drops of the summer 
shower. Tenderness ruled His spirit, even toward His 
enemies. Into this His startling sternness at last dis- 
solved. As He approaches the city, in which He is 
soon to be crucified, and against which the fire of 
righteous indignation could not but go forth, pity, in- 
finite pity, pours her quenching tears upon that fire, 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 167 

and with another look and in altered tone, in which the 
compassion of the Godhead reveals itself, he exclaims, 
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have 
gathered thy children together, and ye would not ! " 
And at the last this city was distinguished by a singular 
act of His grace, and when He commanded His disci- 
ples to " preach repentance and remission of sins among 
all nations," He added, " beginning at Jerusalem." 

WITHOUT SIN. 

Sinlessness marked the character of Jesus. The 
marks of passion, of weakness, of pride, of the love 
of popularity, of a thousand infirmities, some of which 
we notice in all other men, are not to be found in the 
life and conversation which is mirrored in the four 
Gospels. For Christ no friend ever apologized, and 
no enemy convinced Him of sin. " To find imagi- 
nary flaws," says an able writer, " is not to read the 
Gospels with an honest mind. If we study this life 
as it is on the simple page it remains the sinless mir- 
acle of all time. Place by the side of Jesus Christ all 
the purest men who have won the homage of the race, a 
Confucius, a Socrates, yet each has some blemish which 
mars his virtue, and his highest grace has been a growth 
through struggle. Gather all of Christian name, even 
those who came nearest their Lord in the first age, yet 
we know that human effort with God's grace could 
make a John, a Paul, but not a Christ, and when we 
read the biography of the saintliest since; a Kempis, a 
Fenelon, a Herbert, a Leighton, all are but single, 
broken rays, of this white light, all confess themselves 
sinful men, whose goodness has been borrowed from 
their perfect Master." 



168 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

Here it is proper to remark that Jesus was, during 
His earthly career, most loved and adored by those who 
knew him best. "Human characters are always re- 
duced in their eminence, and the impressions of awe 
they have raised, by a closer and more complete ac- 
quaintance. But it was not so with Christ. With 
His disciples, in closest terms of intercourse for three 
whole years, their brother, friend, teacher, monitor, 
guest, fellow-traveller, seen by them under all the con- 
ditions of public ministry and private society, he is 
yet visibly raising their sense of his degree and quality, 
becoming a greater wonder and holier mystery, and 
gathering to his person feelings of reverence and awe, 
at once more general and more sacred. And it will be 
discovered in all the disciples that Christ is more sep- 
arated from them, and holds them in deeper awe, the 
closer He comes to them and the more perfectly they 
know Him. He grows sacred, peculiar, wonderful, 
divine as acquaintance reveals Him. At first He is 
only a man, as the senses report him to be; knowledge, 
observation, familiarity raise Him into the God-man. 
And exactly this appears in the history without any 
token of art, or even apparent consciousness that it 
does appear — appears because it is true." 

PERFECT. 

The character of Christ was perfect " Other his- 
torical personages we can study to excess, — we become 
weary of them, and they are belittled to our apprehen- 
sion. We can take in all that they were and all that 
they accomplished, — we can go round them and over 
them, and the greatest of them constitutes so small a 
portion of the world's greatness, and shapes so small a 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 169 

portion of the world's history, that he becomes dwarfed 
in the very attempt to compass and comprehend his 
magnitude. The fame of some popular hero is often 
thus injuriously affected by our having read and heard 
too much about him, though it be all to his praise. 
But who gets tired of Christ, or feels that he has ex- 
hausted His fulness? He occupies the lowest place 
with those who know Him least. He grows upon our 
study. New lines and hues of spiritual beauty reveal 
themselves with every fresh perusal of the evangelic 
record ; there is new meaning in His acts, new force in 
His words. On intimate conversance with His life 
indifference passes into respect, respect deepens into 
reverence, reverence glows into adoration. More and 
more does the human become divine, as we behold the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. None look 
so lovingly into His countenance as those whose 
wonted place is with John on the bosom of their 
Lord. "VVe can conceive of no change in the picture 
which would not be for the worse. There is no defect, 
no excess, no redundancy." 

And it must be remembered that that character has 
been regarded as equally perfect in all those eighteen 
centuries which have elapsed since Christ's appearing; 
among all nations where He has been made known by 
all ranks and conditions of society. Abstractly there 
are great varieties of opinion among men about what 
is perfect in character; there are different standards 
of morality, there are different views in philosophy, 
there are different customs and opinions, there are dif- 
ferent things aimed at in life, there are different at- 
tempts to draw a perfect character. That which would 
seem to be perfect in one age, and, according to the 



170 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

mode of judging in that age, might be seen to be very 
far from being perfect when men should have more en- 
larged and correct views of what constitutes perfection, 
and that which would come up to the demands of that 
more advanced age might still show defects in an age 
still more advanced, and might fail to meet the general 
judgment of mankind as to a claim of absolute sinless- 
ness. But this is the peculiarity of the character of 
Jesus, that it commends itself equally to every age, to 
every class of persons, to the learned and the unlearned, 
to sages, to philosophers, and to those in humble life — 
to ail as absolutely free from sin. 

IMPORTANT TESTIMONY. 

No change, indeed, has there been, as time has ad- 
vanced, in the estimate formed of the character of 
Christ by earnest, thinking men, — even. by many who 
have not accepted Him as God's Messiah. 

ROUSSEAU. 

"Peruse the works of our philosophers with all 
their pomp of diction," says Rousseau ; " how contemp- 
tible are they compared with the Scriptures! Is it 
possible that a book at once so simple and sublime 
should be merely the work of man ? Is it possible 
that the sacred personage whose name it records should 
be himself a mere man ? What sweetness, what purity 
in his manner! What sublimity in his maxims ! What 
profound wisdom in his discourses ! Where is the man, 
where the philosopher, who could so live and so die 
without weakness and without ostentation ? If the 
life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life 
and death of Jesus were those of a God." 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 171 

NAPOLEON. 
Readers may recall the touching words in which Na- 
poleon in St. Helena referred to Jesus Christ. There, 
with the solemn ocean round him and the silent sky 
above, the fierce passions which had so long raged in 
his heart growing still as the volcanic fires which once 
tore the heart of his lonely isle, he felt how the infini- 
tude of calm in the mind of Jesus overarched all the 
working and all the w r aning of men. Alexander, 
Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon had founded empires, 
and they had passed away, but the influence of Jesus 
Christ, gentle as of sunlight over volcanic flame, was 
still sovereign in the. souls of millions. Napoleon in 
St. Helena thought that an irrefragable proof that 
Christ was Divine. 

GOETHE. 

Goethe, the universal genius of modern Germany, and 
who is believed by many to have been the greatest man 
who has appeared in Europe for several centuries, calls 
Christ " the Divme Man," " the Holy One," and rep- 
resents Him as the pattern, example and model of hu- 
manity. Mr. Carlyle, Goethe's great follower in Eng- 
land, always referred in terms of profound reverence to 
Christ. The life of the Saviour was in his view a 
"perfect ideal Poem." "The greatest of all heroes," 
he said, " is One whom we do not name here ! Let 
sacred silence meditate that sacred matter." 

BYRON. 

" If ever man was God or God man," said Lord 
Byron, " Jesus Christ was both." " Whatever else," 
said John Stuart Mill, " may be taken away from us 
by rational criticism, Christ is still left an unique 



172 INFIDELITY EEBUKED. 

figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his 
followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his 
teaching. . . . Nor even now would it be easy, even 
for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the 
rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than 
to endeavor so to live that Ghrist would approve our 
life." 

SHELLEY. 

Poor Shelley, if he had the heart to blaspheme, had 
also the sagacity to write these words : — " The being 
who has influenced in the most memorable manner the 
opinions and the fortunes of the human species is 
Jesus Christ. At this day his name is connected with 
the devotional feelings of two hundred millions of the 
human race. The institutions of the most civilized 
portions of the globe derive their authority from the 
sanction of his doctrines." 

RENAN. 

" Whatever may be the surprises of the future," says 
Renan, " Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship 
will grow young without ceasing, his legend will call 
forth tears without end, his sufferings will melt the 
noblest hearts, all ages will proclaim that, among the 
sons of men, there is none born greater than Jesus." 

PHILLIPS. 

" When," says Mr. Wendell Phillips, " we think of 
these moral characteristics and see what the religion 
has done for the world, we see the commentary which 
eighteen centuries of civilization have written upon 
the Gospels, see what Europe and America are to-day, 
and then turn back to Judea, to that haughty, bigoted, 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 173 

exclusive, illiterate, despised race and see where the 
religion was cradled, we cannot but think that it was 

providential in its birth and beneficence 

It is easier to believe that a power greater than man 
took possession of that Jewish peasant and made Him 
the organ of its communication and the instrument of 
its working, than that He, by any wit or culture or 
cunning of His unaided faculties, created this original 
religion and constructed modern civilization. " 

Such are some of the emphatic and eloquent testi- 
monies which have been given to the benignant and 
celestial virtues of Jesus. 

Christ's opinion of himself. 

The question now presents itself: What did Christ 
think of Himself, and whom did He claim to be in 
consequence ? To this question there can be but one 
answer. Nothing is plainer from the four Gospels, 
than that Jesus again and again claimed to be God, 
in the true and proper sense of the word. He asked 
His disciples, " Whom say ye that I am?" Peter an- 
swered, "The Christ, the Son of the living God." 
Jesus replied, "This is revealed to thee by my Father 
who is in heaven." Again to Philip He said, "He 
that hath seen me hath seen my Father also." When 
His foes, as well as His friends, demanded, " Tell us 
plainly if thou be the Christ," Jesus said, " I and my 
Father are one." Then they began to stone Him as 
a blasphemer, and He asked, " For which of these 
good works do ye stone me ? " They answered, " We 
stone thee not for a good work but for blasphemy, be- 
cause that thou being a man maJcest thyself God" All 
this shows that both His friends and foes understood 



174 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

Him to claim that He was God, and His foes laid 
such a sense upon His words as to expose Him to the 
Jewish death penalty of stoning for their bold use. So, 
too, when Jesus was on trial before the high priest, who 
as the highest religious authority had a right to know 
exactly what His pretensions were, and who put the 
most solemn oath to Him then known in Jewish juris- 
prudence, thus, "I adjure thee by the living God that 
thou tell us if thou be the Christ, the Son of God ; " 
with the calmest self-possession he responded, "I am." 
Immediately Caiaphas exclaimed, "What need we any 
further witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. 
What think ye? 7 ' Under that appeal they declared 
Him guilty, and decided that He ought to die under 
their law, because He claimed the prerogatives of God. 
They understood perfectly, that in speaking of Him- 
self as He did, He claimed a oneness in knowledge, 
power and glory with the Father, an intrinsic affinity 
with Him in essence. 

Now the question of questions comes, "Who was 
Jesus of Nazareth ? " 

NO IMPOSTURE. 

To allege that Christ was an impostor is the boldest 
and basest of all absurdities. It is universally ac- 
knowledged, and, as we have seen, even by infidels 
themselves, that He preached the purest code of morals 
and lived the purest life, crowned with the noblest 
death. How, then, could one and the same character 
be at once the very best and the very worst? The 
contradiction is as monstrous as that white is black 
and black is white. How could He play the hypo- 
crite in view of poverty, persecution and crucifixion, as 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 175 

His certain and only reward in this life ? How could 
He keep up the play without even for a moment fall- 
ing out of His role and showing His true colors? 
How could such a wicked scheme find universal ac- 
ceptance and produce greater and better results than 
any which human wisdom and goodness before or since 
has been able to achieve, or even to conceive? These 
questions are unanswerable. The hypothesis of im- 
posture is logically so untenable and morally so re- 
volting, that its mere statement is its condemnation. 
No scholar has seriously endeavored to carry it out. 

NO ENTHUSIAST. 

Equally baseless is the theory that Jesus was an 
enthusiast who deceived Himself — a noble dreamer, 
imagining that He was the Son of God and the prom- 
ised Messiah, and dying a victim to this delusion. 
We have already seen that Christ possessed the most 
clear, balanced, serene, and comprehensive intellect 
known to history. Is it, then, within the range of 
rational belief, that His mind was so strangely clouded, 
so hotly imaginative, that He believed Himself, not to 
have seen a vision, or heard a voice, not to have healed 
one or two sick persons or calmed one or two maniacs, 
but to have cured blindness, deafness, lameness, lep- 
rosy, for years, by word or touch, — to have walked on 
the sea, — to have fed large multitudes with a few 
loaves and fishes, — to have dried up a tree with His 
rebuke, — to have, on several occasions, recalled the 
dead to life? 

u In Judea, where the minds of men were burning: 
with feverish expectation of a Messiah, I can," says 
Dr. Channing, "easily conceive of a Jew imagining 



176 INFIDELITY EEBUKED. 

that in himself this ardent conception, this ideal of 
glory, was to be realized. I can conceive of his seat- 
ing himself in fancy on the throne of David, and 
secretly pondering the means of his appointed triumphs. 
But that a Jew should fancy himself the Messiah, and 
at the same time should strip that character of all the 
attributes which had fired his youthful imagination 
and heart — that he should start aside from all the feel- 
ings and hopes of his age, and should acquire a con- 
sciousness of being destined to a wholly new career, 
and one as unbounded as it was new, this is exceed- 
ingly improbable; and one thing is certain, that an 
imagination so erratic, so ungoverned, and able to gen- 
erate the conviction of being destined to a work so 
immeasurably disproportioned to the power of the 
individual, must have partaken of insanity. Now, is 
it conceivable that an individual, mastered by so wild 
and fervid an imagination, should have sustained the 
dignity claimed by Christ, should have acted worthily 
the highest part ever assumed on earth ? Would not 
his enthusiasm have broken out amidst the peculiar 
excitements of the life of Jesus, and have left a touch 
of madness on his teaching and conduct? Is it to such 
a man that we should look for the inculcation of a 
new and perfect form of virtue, and for the exemplifi- 
cation of humanity in its fairest form ?" 

DISCIPLES NOT ENTHUSIASTS. 

It is important to add, that the evidence that the 
disciples of Jesus, in preparing His history, were not 
overmastered by enthusiasm, and driven to extrava- 
gance of representation, is as conclusive as that which 
shows that He was free from this spirit Himself. 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 177 

Wnat they have written exhibits a simplicity without 
example in other annals. It is fragmentary, and 
devoid of that rotundity and glow which belong to 
the works of heat and fusion. The manner of the 
biography is as surprising as its contents. The most 
odious assaults on the chief personage are related with 
coolness. The most astonishing acts of power and mar- 
vels of endurance, humility and meekness are related 
without a syllable of praise. There is not a word of 
panegyric, and scarcely a word of comment. The vast- 
ness and awfulness of the matter stand in contrast with 
the strongest equanimity and reserve in the expression. 
Whatever else this may prove, it demonstrates that 
the writers were neither enthusiasts nor fanatics. Had 
they been such, it would have somewhere distorted and 
exaggerated the teaching, somewhere cast a sinister ex- 
pression or lurid glare on the divine countenance, or 
somewhere blazed forth in language of intemperance 
and fury. If the terms can be used without misappre- 
hension, we would say of the gospel history, that it is 
unrivalled in common sense, well-balanced narrative, 
and sound judgment. As the character represented rises 
high above all mists of vagary, so the representation 
itself repels the thought of enthusiastic excess. 

NOT A MERE MAN. 

In the light which the New Testament casts upon 
the character of Jesus, it cannot, Sir, be successfully 
maintained that He was a mere man. The truth beams 
out from every page of His life that He could not have 
been a man and nothing more. " If there was no 
superhuman element in His person, why have we but 
one Jesus? Why did human nature succeed in pro- 
12 



178 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

ducing such a prodigy in such unfavorable circum- 
stances as at Nazareth and Capernaum ? Since, upon 
the supposition that Jesus was a mere man, the same 
powers are always present, why did she succeed but 
once? why never before, and why never since? Hu- 
man nature has had the opportunity a thousand times, 
and in circumstances a thousand times more favorable, 
of producing a Perfect Man : how comes it, then, that 
this youth of Nazareth, born in poverty and reared 
amid Jewish prejudice, should^be the only one? Here 
is a problem which rationalism cannot solve. If Jesus 
is a mere outgrowth of human nature, as Renan and 
others would have us believe, His character is a greater 
miracle than all the miracles connected with His birth 
and life. Why should this youth of Nazareth alone 
be the most innocent, pure, original, consistent, patient, 
spiritual of men ? The perfect character of Jesus and 
the circumstances in which it was developed necessi- 
tate the presence of a superhuman element. He was 
a man and something more." 

MORE THAN MAN. 

What that " something more " was, we can be at no 
loss to determine in the light of the testimony of Christ, 
already adduced, respecting His own Divinity. He 
" thought it no robbery to be equal with God." And, 
most important is it to observe how frequently and 
pointedly, for the establishment of this very truth, He 
referred to the Old Testament, against which the as- 
saults of infidels are mainly directed. "I was daily 
with you," said He to those who came to apprehend 
Him, "in the temple teaching, and ye took me not: 
but the Scriptures must be fulfilled." "Think not that 



FOURTEENTH LETTER. 179 

I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets: I am 
not come to destroy bat to fulfil." " These are the 
words which I spake unto you while I was yet with 
yon, that all things must be fulfilled which were writ- 
ten in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in 
the Psalms concerning me." Thus Jesus clasping in 
one whole all the Old Testament Scriptures under their 
recognized title, subjects to their exact fulfilment in 
His person His claim to the Messiahship. He turns 
His adversaries, the Jews, to their sacred oracles for a 
confutation of their unbelief, saying, "Search the Scrip- 
tures . . . they are they which testify of me." He 
also refers His rejection by them to their disbelief of 
Moses' writings, saying, " For had ye believed Moses 
ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me ; but if 
ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my 
words? " Unquestioned, therefore, must forever remain 
the truth of the Old Testament while its prophecies of 
the coming Christ are chosen by Jesus of Nazareth to 
record His history from the birth at Bethlehem to the 
ascension on Olivet. He so enwrapped Himself in the 
written Word, that the two grand divisions of it — the 
Old Testament and the New Testament — must stand 
or fall together. It is impossible to weaken the claim 
of the Hebrew Scriptures to our reverence without 
impeaching the testimony of the Son of God. The 
Incarnate Word determines that nothing shall rise 
above the authority of the written word. His revela- 
tions of "the mystery which from the beginning of the 
world hath been hid in God," are all made in the light 
which shines from Inspiration. The unfolding of His 
own person and work is but the interpretation of earlier 
symbols. In no instance is the truth of the past cen- 



180 INFIDELITY KEBUKED. 

turies allowed to be set aside as unworthy the study 
of the present. His stern rebuke fell on them who 
"made the commandment of God of none effect by 
their tradition." While the glories of the new dispen- 
sation were represented as the sequel of an earlier cov- 
enant when Jesus, in the synagogue at Nazareth, after 
reading from Isaiah's roll, said: "This day is this 
Scripture fulfilled in your ears." 



FIFTEENTH LETTER. 

Sir : The tree is known by its fruit ; so is the char- 
acter of a book to be estimated by the influence which 
it exerts. To this test of value no other volume can 
appeal with anything like the triumph which the Bible 
claims in such a trial. Its career has been one of 
light, liberty, and glory. How marked aud marvellous 
have been its effects ! 

INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 

Look at its influence upon individual character. 
Contrast in point of mere benevolence the lives and 
deportment of such an infidel as Rousseau and such a 
Christian as Doddridge — the one all pride, selfishness, 
fury, caprice, rage, gross sensuality, casting al.out fire- 
brands and death, professing no rule of morals but his 
feelings, abusing the finest powers to the dissemination 
not merely of objections against Christianity but of the 
most licentious and profligate principles; Doddridge 
all purity, mildness, meekness and love, ardent in his 
good will to man, the friend and counsellor of the sor- 
rowful, regular, calm, consistent, dispensing peace and 
truth by his labors and his writings, living not for him- 
self but for the common good, to which he sacrificed 
his health and even life. 

Or contrast such a man as Volney with Swartze. 
They both visit distant lands; they are active and in- 
defatigable in their pursuits; they acquire celebrity 

(131) 



182 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

and communicate respectively a certain impulse to 
their widened circles. But the one, jaundiced by infi- 
delity, the sport of passion and caprice ; lost to all ar- 
gument and right feeling, comes home to diffuse the 
poison of unbelief, to be a misery to himself, the 
plague and disturber of his country, the dark calum- 
niator of the Christian faith ; the other remains far 
from his native land to preach the peaceful doctrine on 
the shores of India ; he becomes the friend and brother 
of those whom he had never seen, and only heard of 
as fellow-creatures ; he diffuses blessings for half a cen- 
tury; he secures the admiration of the heathen prince 
near whom he resides; he becomes the mediator be- 
tween contending tribes and nations ; he establishes a 
reputation for purity, integrity, disinterestedness, meek- 
ness, which compels all around to respect and love 
him; he forms churches; he instructs children; he 
dispenses the seeds of charity and truth ; he is the 
model of all the virtues he enjoins. 

INDIVIDUAL HAPPINESS. 

Look, also, at the effect of Christianity upon indi- 
vidual happiness. Hear the urbane, the powerful, the 
envied, but infidel Chesterfield speak : 

"I have run," he tells us, "the silly rounds of 
pleasure and of business, and I have done with them 
all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, 
and consequently know their futility, and do not re- 
gret their loss. I appreciate them at their real value, 
which is, in truth, very low; whereas those who have 
not experienced always overrate them. They only see 
their fair outside and are dazzled with their glare. 
But I have been behind the scenes; I have seen all 



FIFTEENTH LETTER. 183 

the coarse pullies and dirty ropes which exhibit and 
move the gaudy machines ; and I have seen and smelt 
the tallow candles which illuminated the whole decora- 
tion to the astonishment and admiration of an igno- 
rant audience. When I reflect back upon what I have 
seen, what I have heard, what I have" done, I can 
hardly persuade myself that all that frivolous hurry 
and bustle and pleasure of the world had any reality ; 
and I look on what has passed as one of those wild 
dreams which opium occasions, and I by no means de- 
sire to repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the 
fugitive illusion. Shall I tell you that I bear this 
melancholy situation with that meritorious constancy 
and resignation which most people boast of? No. I 
cannot help it. I bear it because I must bear it, 
whether I will or no. I think of nothing but killing 
time the best way I can, now that he has become mine 
enemy." 

Hear also the confession of Byron, alike eminent in 
the splendor of his genius and in his hardened wick- 
edness : 

"Though gay companions o'er the bowl 
Dispel a while the sense of ill, 
Though pleasure fill the maddening soul, 
The heart — the heart is lonely still. 

"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
Count o'er thy days from anguish free, 
And know whatever thou hast been 
'Tis something better not to be. 

"Nay, for myself, so dark my fate 

Through every turn of life hath been, 
Men and the world so much I hate, 
I care not when I quit the scene." 

Now, let such an experience as this be contrasted 



184 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

with that of thousands of thousands who have lived 
in communion with God, enjoying the light of His 
countenance, resigned to His will, happy in the dis- 
charge of duty, and rejoicing in the prospect of the 
ever-blooming inheritance awaiting them when death 
shall remove them from earth, and who shall, in view 
of this contrast, deny that the religion of the Bible is 
the source, and the only source of real and enduring 
happiness ? 

SOCIAL RELATIONS. 

The Bible also exerts a blessed influence on the social 
relations. Wherever it is faithfully preached and freely 
inculcated, and its doctrines are carried home to the 
understandings of men, the aspect of society is altered, 
the frequency of crime is diminished, men begin to love 
justice and to administer it bylaws; and a virtuous 
public opinion, that strongest safeguard of right, 
spreads over a nation the shield of its invisible protec- 
tion. Wherever it has faithfully been brought to bear 
upon the human heart, even under most unpromising 
circumstances, it has, within a single generation, revo- 
lutionized the whole structure of society, and thus 
within a few years done more for man than all other 
means have for ages accomplished without it. In 
proof of the power of the Bible to leaven and reno- 
vate society we need only point to the Sandwich Is- 
lands, and to the mission fields and schools of India 
and Turkey; we need but allude to the marked dif- 
ference between nations which have received the Bible 
and those which have rejected it — between Prussia and 
France, between England or America and Spain. On 
a candid survey of the field we see the correctness of 
Chancellor Kent's saying: "The general diffusion of 



FIFTEENTH LETTER. 185 

the Bible is the most effectual way to civilize and hu- 
manize mankind ; to purify and exalt the general sys- 
tem of public morals; to give efficacy to the just pre- 
cepts of international and municipal law; to enforce 
the observance of prudence, temperance, justice and 
fortitude, and to improve all the relations of social and 
domestic life." 

MODE OF INFLUENCE. 

Nor let us fail to notice the manner in which this 
sacred Book provides for the regulation of human con- 
duct in social life ; for this, putting all other arguments 
out of sight, makes a strong appeal to our faith in 
favor of its divinity. If any person had been re- 
quired to say how many volumes would have been ne- 
cessary to point out the various duties which man owes 
to man — how extensive the code which should have 
recognized every relation and met every case — the natu- 
ral answer would have been : *' I suppose that even the 
world itself could not contain the books that should 
be written." But, with majestic simplicity, with the 
efficiency of an all -comprehending wisdom, it is here 
done in a few pages. The duties are ascertained with 
an adaptation to all countries, times and circumstances, 
and they are all stated with the highest and most com- 
manding sanctions. Rulers here learn lessons of just 
and gracious government; subjects, of respect and 
obedience. The foundations of all wise jurisprudence 
are found here; nor is there a general principle of en- 
lightened legislation which does not flow from this 
source. Commands of moderation and equity to mas- 
ters, and of conscientious honesty and submission to 
servants, have here their place. Parental tenderness 
is here divinely blended with parental authority, and 



186 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

in the conjugal relation, made so sacred, so hallowed in 
the religion of Christ, all the strength of moral obli- 
gation and the elevating sentiments of piety are added 
to the tender affections of our nature, strengthening 
and making them permanent.. And where a particular 
precept may be wanting, still in no case need we err, 
as even here we have the guiding light of some great 
principle. 

POLITICAL INFLUENCE. 

The political influence of the Bible is well known. 
What has the volume not done for the establishment 
of genuine liberty ? " Christianity," says Montesquieu, 
" is a stranger to despotic power." " Religion," says 
De Tocqueville, " is the companion of liberty in all 
its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy and the Divine 
Source of its claims." Even the Abbe de la Mennais, 
who had one of the most powerful minds in Europe, 
little as he regarded Christianity as a revelation from 
God, was accustomed to speak of its Author as the 
Great Republican of his age. " Christianity," said De 
Witt Clinton, " is in its essence, its doctrines and its 
forms republican. It teaches our descent from a com- 
mon pair, it inculcates the natural equality of man- 
kind, and it points to our origin and our end, to our 
nativity and our graves, and to our immortal destinies, 
as illustrations of this impressive truth." Even the 
historian Hume, whose prepossessions all lay on the 
side of absolute monarchy, and who was sufficiently 
prejudiced against the Bible, was constrained to the 
confession, "that the precious spark of liberty had 
been kindled and was preserved by the Puritans alone, 
and that it was to this sect the English owe the whole 
freedom of their Constitution." The world's annals 



FIFTEENTH LETTER. 187 

attest the truth of these utterances, and they have one 
of their noblest verifications in the fact that the tree 
of liberty in our own happy country, beneath whose 
ample shade we have lived, and by whose fairest fruit 
we have been fed, was sown by God Himself in His 
revelation, and owes its elevation and grandeur entirely 
to the truth which He has made known. 

CAUSE OF HUMANITY. 

Nor must the influence of the Bible on the cause of 
humanity be overlooked. The Gospel of Christ, in- 
dorsed and enforced by His example, introduced a 
new order of humanity into the world. It poured its 
fresh, renewing streams through all the channels of 
social life. In ancient Rome there was not a single 
charitable building; but after the introduction of 
Christianity there were twenty-five large houses set 
apart for the reception of orphans, of the sick, of 
strangers, of the aged, and of the poor. So it has been 
ever since. The heathen world has no almshouses, no 
asylums for age, infancy or misfortune. The ruins of 
palaces, temples, theatres and aqueducts meet the won- 
dering eye of the traveller, but there is not a ruin of 
which it can be said: "This was a house of mercy." 
In Christian countries, however, a directly opposite 
spirit prevails. Here we witness the most astonishing 
sacrifices and labors for the benefit of the human race. 
Here we find a provident compassion at work for the 
relief of every misery of our nature. Nor is it re- 
garded enough by the refined and zealous benevolence 
which in such lands prevails, to confuse the varieties 
of misfortune by extending the same indiscriminate aid 
to sufferers who agree in nothing but the common 



188 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

characteristics of grief. Each individual calamity ex- 
periences a distinct compassion, is cherished with its 
appropriate comforts, and healed by its specific reme- 
dies. The maniac is shut out from the tumults of the 
world, the Magdalene weeps over the Gospel of Christ, 
and washes His name with her tears; a mother is given to 
the foundling, a Samaritan to the wounded, the drowned 
person is called back from the dead, the forsaken youth 
is snatched from the dominion of vice, a soul is breathed 
into the deaf and dumb, and the child-bearing woman, 
when she thinks of the days of her anguish, knows 
that she has where to lay her head. In every direction 
in which the eye can turn some edifice rises up conse- 
crated to mercy, a vast hospital, a place of wounds and 
anguish, a tabernacle of healing and comfort. 

Such, Sir, are some of the temporal effects of Chris- 
tianity. It has marked its radiant course with acts of 
mercy and loving-kindness. The two thousand years 
during which it has been called by that name have 
been years of progress from the impure to the pure, 
from the barbarous to the humane, from the worse to 
the better. It has produced and diffused a civilization 
that has utterly eclipsed all pagan civilization. It has 
given woman her place. It has hedged round human 
life with new sanctions ; abolishing polygamy and put- 
ting a stop to infanticide, to torture, to gladiatorial 
shows. It has mitigated the horrors of war, and cast 
into shadow the glory of it as compared with the glory 
of peace. It has abolished caste. It has condemned 
slavery. 

CONFESSION OF INFIDELS. 

And, let it be noted, infidels themselves have con- 
fessed this beneficent tendency of the Gospel. Boling- 



FIFTEENTH LETTER. 189 

broke acknowledges " that Constantine acted the part 
of a sound politician in protecting Christianity, as it 
tended to give firmness and solidity to his empire, 
softened the ferocity of the army, and reformed the licen- 
tiousness of the provinces, and by infusing a spirit of 
moderation and submission to government, tended to 
extinguish those principles of avarice and ambition, 
injustice and violence, by which so many factions were 
formed. "No religion," says the same opposer of 
Christianity, " ever appeared in the world whose natu- 
ral tendency was so much directed to promote the peace 
and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a 
law in every possible definition of the word. And 
therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a hu- 
man invention, it had been the most amiable and the 
most useful invention that was ever imposed on man- 
kind for their good." Thus even Rousseau: "If all 
were perfect Christians, individuals would do their 
duty, the people would be obedient to the laws, the 
magistrates incorrupt, and there would be neither 
vanity nor luxury in such a state." " I know the 
Scriptures sufficiently well to acknowledge," said 
Byron, " that if the mild and benignant spirit of this 
religion were believed and acted on by all, there would 
be a wonderful change in this wicked world." 

When, therefore, infidelity calls upon us to cast the 
Bible away as delusion and vanity, we not only charge 
her with glaring inconsistency but demand that she 
first show us what she has to give us in its room. Let 
her spread before us a truthful record of what she has 
done to elevate, adorn and bless humanity; of the 
woes she has healed ; of the sorrowful she has com- 
forted ; of the oppressed she has delivered from their 



190 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

■ 

thraldom ; of the suffering she has relieved, and then it 
will be time enough for her to strive for the destruc- 
tion of the precious Word of God. 

A WISE DECISION. 

Some years ago a society of gentlemen in England, 
most of whom had enjoyed a liberal education, and 
were persons of polished manners, but had unhappily 
imbibed infidel principles, used to assemble at each 
other's houses for the purpose of ridiculing the Scrip- 
tures, and hardening one another in their unbelief. At 
last they unanimously formed a resolution solemnly to 
burn the Bible, and so to be troubled no more with a 
Book which was so hostile to their principles and dis- 
quieting to their consciences. The day fixed upon ar- 
rived. A large fire was prepared, a Bible was laid on 
the table, and a flowing bowl ready to drink its dirge. 
For the execution of their plans they fixed upon a 
young gentleman of high birth, brilliant vivacity and 
elegance of manners. He undertook the task, and 
after a few enlivening glasses, amidst the applause of 
his jovial companions, he approached the table, took 
up the Bible, and was walking leisurely forward t6 
push it into the fire; but, happening to give it a look, 
all at once he was seized with a trembling, paleness 
overspread his countenance, and he seemed convulsed. 
He returned to the table, and, laying down the Bible, 
said, with a strong asseveration : " We will not burn 
that Book till we get a better" Soon after this the 
same gay, lively young gentleman died, and on his 
death-bed was led to true repentance, deriving un- 
shaken hopes of forgiveness and of future blessedness 
from that Book he was once going to burn. 



SIXTEENTH LETTER. 

SfcR: In this letter I desire to show that the diffi- 
culties in regard to the Bible are by no means confined 
to those who believe it to have come from God. In 
other words, I undertake to prove that if the Christian 
be esteemed credulous and superstitious in receiving as 
divine what the light of nature, the revelations of sci- 
ence and human experience have more and more con- 
firmed, the infidel defies reason by a creed of contra- 
dictions to its teachings, and disgraces faith by a sub- 
scription to paradoxes more preposterous than prophecy 
and more marvellous than miracles. In doing this I 
shall strengthen my own views with such aid from dis- 
tinguished men who have written on this subject as 
will make the demonstration all the more effective. 

MUST BELIEVE THE OLD TESTAMENT TO BE A 
FORGERY. 

The infidel, if he regards the Old Testament as a 
forgery, must believe that some single scribe or some 
number of scribes in the days of Hezekiah, without 
any conceivable motive, prepared pens and parchment 
rolls to impose upon a nation a history unknown to 
the national life, a religion and a worship unconnected 
with any previous sentiment, either of reverence or 
superstition. Think of what such an undertaking 
would include — not only a forged history of a past of 

which those to whom it was addressed had no knowl- 

(191) 



192 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

edge, but along with it a forged poetry, a forged na- 
tional literature, forged ethics, a forged religion, forged 
prayers and hymns, a forged ritual system, all made to 
suit ; forged national songs for forged deliverances, a 
forged geography, at least in its names as adapted to 
ancient local events, a forged chronology, together with 
the forgery of many thousand proper names of men all 
having a significance in the vernacular language, and 
that significance corresponding so wonderfully to the 
times and circumstances in which they are supposed to 
be given. Even the language itself must to some ex- 
tent be forged ; it must be cut over like an old gar- 
ment and made to fit the earlier as well as the later 
body. Old words must be forged and obsolete gram- 
matical forms and obscure passages made on purpose, 
such as to demand the scholiast's aid. How does rea- 
son revolt from such a theory as this ? 

MUST BELIEVE THAT THE UNCULTIVATED JEWS 
WERE WISER THAN PHILOSOPHERS. 

The infidel must believe that from a comparatively 
rude and uncultivated people, a horde of untutored 
shepherds but just escaped from a cruel and oppressive 
bondage, without philosophy, science or literature, we 
have obtained the only clear and consistent account of 
the origin of the world, the most sublime and rational 
and only worthy views of the Divine Being and attri- 
butes and the purest principles of law for regulating 
His worship and the duties and relations of mankind. 
He must believe that men were found among the Jews 
capable of instructing the world in these great truths, 
while the enlightened nations of antiquity — though 
justly celebrated for affording models of eloquence, 



SIXTEENTH LETTER. 193 

poetry, statuary and architecture, as well as sound 
principles of natural and moral science — have, in their 
highest stages of advancement, provided mankind 
with the most silly legends, puerile traditions and ab- 
surd theories on the world's origin and the first princi- 
ples of religion. 

MUST BELIEVE THAT PROPHECIES WERE GUESSES. 

He must believe that predictions, with which his- 
tory, written by neither Jews nor Christians, affords 
numerous striking coincidences, were mere guesses of 
men as devoid of political sagacity as, on his theory, 
of moral principle. For example, the prediction con- 
cerning the Jews — that they should be dispersed among 
all nations, be a proverb and a by-word, and be ex- 
posed to sufferings and persecutions — a prediction the 
fulfilment of which is before our eyes, in this people 
being without temple or altar, king, priest or prophet, 
iu their continuing unchanged, though having endured 
all change, and in their remaining to our day distinct 
in the practice of the religious rites received by their 
fathers, and firm in their resistance of every effort to 
denationalize them — this, and all such predictions the 
infidel must believe to have been the utterances of 
ignorance or conjecture. 

MUST ACCOUNT FOR THE ADHERENCE OF THE 
JEWS TO THEIR SCRIPTURES. 

He must believe that, notwithstanding the Old 
Testament records bear witness to little but the shame 
of the Jews — are filled with reproaches and denuncia- 
tions, tax them with the most tremendous guilt and 
menace them with terrible punishment, upbraid them 
13 



194 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

with the most egregious folly and the most odious in- 
gratitude, remind them that their fathers had a 
glorious heritage and had forfeited it, a noble lineage 
and disgraced it, a Divine king, against whom they 
had been perpetually plotting treason — yet this people, 
instead of hunting down these documents for destruc- 
tion, as being little better than " archives of libel" on 
their nation, act a natural and reasonable part in 
having persisted, and still persisting, in guarding and 
transmitting them with the profoundest veneration 
and accepting them as authentic history ; nay, as in- 
spired truth ! 

MUST ACCOUNT FOR THE MIRACLES. 

In relation to the miracles of the New Testament 
the infidel, if he regards them as masterly frauds on 
men's senses, committed at the time and by the parties 
supposed in the records, must believe that a vast 
number of apparent miracles, involving the most 
astounding phenomena — such as the instant restoration 
of the sick, blind, deaf and lame, and the resurrection 
of the dead — performed in open day, amidst multi- 
tudes of malignant enemies — imposed alike on all, and 
triumphed at once over the strongest prejudices and 
the deepest enmity — those who received them and 
those who rejected them differing only in the cer- 
tainly not very trifling particular as to whether 
they came from heaven or from hell — and that 
those who were thus successful in this extraordinary 
conspiracy against men's senses and against common 
sense were Galilean Jews, such as all history of the 
period represents them — ignorant, obscure, illiterate, 
and above all previously bigoted, like all their 



SIXTEENTH LETTER. 195 

countrymen, to the very system of which, together 
with all other religions on the earth, they modestly, by 
these frauds, meditated the abrogation. Or, if he re- 
gard these miracles as either a congeries of deeply- 
contrived fictions or accidental myths, he must believe 
t!i at accident and chance have given to these legends 
their exquisite appearance of historic plausibility; and 
on either supposition he must believe (what is infinitely 
more wonderful) that the world, while the fictions were 
being published, and in the known absence of the facts 
they asserted to be true, suffered itself to be befooled 
into the belief of their truth and out of its belief of all 
the systems it did previously believe to be true, and 
that it acted thus notwithstanding persecution from 
without as well as prejudice from within. Further- 
more, that the men who were engaged in the compila- 
tion of these monstrous fictions (which, according to 
the admission of Strauss himself, the strictest historic 
investigations bring within thirty or forty years of the 
very time in which all the alleged wonders they relate 
are said to have occurred) chose them as the vehicle 
of the purest morality ; and, though the most per- 
nicious deceivers of mankind, were yet the most 
scrupulous teachers of veracity and benevolence ! 

MUST BELIEVE THAT BAD MEN DEVISED AND 
PROPAGATED A HOLY SYSTEM OF TRUTH. 

The infidel must believe that, although the Christian 
religion gives no countenance to sin in any shape or 
person, curbs all passions and denounces all vices, and 
although its founders knew that tne propagators of 
such a system would, of course, be under the necessity 
of appearing to conform to it very rigidly themselves— 



196 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

a task clearly that would be most irksome and painful 
to any other than really righteous persons — a per- 
petual crucifixion, indeed ; yet these men, who were 
utterly destitute of holy principle — instead of devising 
a system like that of the surrounding Pagans, which 
would allow their lives to match freely with their 
wicked hearts, or one like that of Mohammed, which 
would leave their passions and their policy large lib- 
erty, or one such as the Jews had framed out of Moses 
by glosses and Rabbinical traditions, which would 
allow at least their pride, ambition, avarice and re- 
venge to walk abroad in open day — devised this strict 
Christianity, which would grant them no license what- 
ever, and even refuse to be propagated unless they 
would cut off all spotted indulgences and live the 
lives of saints. 

MUST BELIEVE THAT PLEBEIAN JEWS DREW AN 
IDEAL PORTRAIT OF CHRIST. 

The infidel must believe that certain plebeian Jews 
drew an ideal portrait of Jesus Christ ; that in some 
way they emancipated themselves from the prejudices 
of their nation, which gloried in exclusive privileges, 
w r as steeped in religious bigotry and consoled itself 
amidst its calamities with the dream of a conquering 
Messiah, who should restore and augment the glories 
of ancient Israel ; that they unswathed themselves 
from all these life-long notions, and conceived a Mes- 
siah whose whole life is depicted as one series of 
humiliations and ignominv — whose glories were all to 
be in the future and invisible world — who, in opposi- 
tion to their national narrowness and intense bigotry, 
inculcated universal brotherhood and a world-wide 



SIXTEENTH LETTER. 197 

charity; who proclaimed the approaching abolition of 
all those darling privileges on which a Jew prided 
himself, in favor of a religion which should no longer 
know the badge of Jew or Gentile, and who at last 
died the death of a common malefactor. He must 
believe that these Jews "drew a portrait which it is 
inconceivable that even one should successfully execute, 
and yet which no less than four have dared to essay, 
and with similar success — a portrait in which even the 
combination of the human elements and their mode of 
presentation are of the most singular originality; in 
which obscurity, poverty and suffering are covered 
with a halo of glory which belongs to no hero of his- 
tory or romance; in which a boundless sympathy with 
human frailty is conciliated with a holiness which 
knows no frailty ; in which virtue, perfect as it is, is 
untinctured with that austerity which is almost always 
its shadow, and which so often detracts from its loveli- 
ness; in which patience and meekness, whichcan bear 
all wrongs and forgive them, are united with a courage 
on behalf of truth which the frowns of an opposing 
world cannot daunt, a gentleness which will not ' break 
the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax/ with an 
indignation which launched at incurable hypocrisy 
more bitter and burning invectives than ever before 
fell from human lips — a portrait in which all these 
and many traits more,.equally unlikely to be combined 
in human nature, are conjoined with supernatural 
qualities which, far from betraying discordance with 
the human elements, are so artfully wrought into the 
picture, that, instead of convincing the world (as they 
should have done) that Christ was a mere ideal, they 
have beguiled it into accepting Him as an historic 



198 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

reality." Who can doubt that such a portrait, so far 
beyond the power of the philosophers, was still farther 
beyond the imagination of fishermen of Galilee ? Who 
can question that the evangelists were as unable to 
originate such a portrait as Peter to have chiselled out 
of the marble the beauty of the Apollo Belvidere, or 
Paul to have painted that wonder of art, the Sistine 
Madonna? 

MUST ACCOUNT FOR THE SUCCESS OF CHRISTIANITY 
AGAINST THE MIGHTIEST OPPOSITION. 

The infidel must believe, moreover, that although 
in attempting to propagate a new religion to the ex- 
clusion of every other, the Apostles were undertaking 
what was entirely new and opposed to the views of all 
nations; although the doctrines they preached were 
resisted by all the influence of the several priesthoods, 
all the power of the several governments, all the pas- 
sions, habits and prejudices of the people, and all the 
wit and pride of the philosophers of all nations; al- 
though the age was such as insured to their fabrica- 
tion the most intelligent examination, with the strongest 
possible disposition to detect them ; although in them- 
selves these infatuated men were directly the reverse 
of what such resistance demanded, and, when they com- 
menced, were surrounded by circumstances of the most 
depressing kind and by opposers specially exulting 
in the confidence of their destruction ; although the 
mode they adopted was of all others most calculated 
to expose their own weakness and dishonesty, and to 
embitter the enmity and increase the contempt of their 
opposers, so that they encountered everywhere the most 
tremendous persecutions, till torture and death were 



SIXTEENTH LETTER. 199 

almost synonymous with the name of Christian ; al- 
though they had nothing to propose to Jew or Gentile 
as a matter of faith but what the wisdom of the world 
ridiculed and the vice of the world hated, and all men 
were united in despising ; although they had nothing 
earthly with which to tempt any one to receive their 
fabrication, except the necessity of an entire change in 
all his habits and dispositions and an assurance that 
tribulations and persecutions must be his portion ; yet 
when philosophers, with all their learning, and rank, 
and subtlety, and veneration, could produce no effect 
on the public mind, these obscure Galileans, with their 
" myth," obtained such influence throughout the whole 
extent of the Roman. Empire, and especially in the 
most enlightened cities, that in thirty years what they 
themselves (by the supposition) did not believe they 
made hundreds of thousands of all classes — philos- 
ophers, senators, governors, priests, soldiers, as well as 
plebeians — believe and maintain unto death ; yea, that 
they planted this doctrine of their own invention so 
deeply that all the persecutions of three hundred years 
could not root it up. They established the Gospel so 
permanently that in three hundred years it was the 
established religion of an empire co-extensive with the 
known world, and continues still the religion of all 
civilized nations. 

MUST EXPLAIN MONUMENTS, INSTITUTIONS, MEDALS, 
COINS, ETC. 

Besides, Sir, the infidel must explain how it was that 
acute and subtle enemies, like Celsus, Porphyry and 
Julian, did not make short work of the argument by 
denymg the main facts of the Christian history; he 



200 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

must explain the origin of the numerous monuments 
in the world which have been reared on the supposi- 
tion of the truth of the great facts of Christian history 
— the ancient temples whose ruins are scattered every- 
where, the tombs and inscriptions in the Catacombs at 
Rome, the sculptures and paintings which have called 
forth the highest efforts of genius in the early and the. 
mediaeval ages, and the books that have been written 
on the supposition that the religion had the origin as- 
cribed to it in the New Testament; he must explain 
the observance of the first day of the week in so many 
lands and for so many ages in commemoration of the 
belief that Christ rose from the dead ; he must explain 
the observance of the day which is supposed to com- 
memorate the birth of the Redeemer, as one would have 
to explain the observance of the birthday of Washing- 
ton on the supposition that Washington was a "myth," 
and the observance of the fourth day of July on the 
supposition that what has been regarded as a history 
of the American Revolution was a romance; he must 
explain the ordinance kept up in memory of His death 
for nearly two thousand years on the supposition that 
the death of Christ never occurred on the cross at all ; 
he must explain the honor and the homage done to the 
cross everywhere — as a standard in war, as a symbol 
of faith, as a charm or an amulet, as an ornament worn 
by beauty and piety, as reared on high to mark the 
place where God is worshipped, as an emblem of self- 
sacrifice, of love, of unsullied purity — the cross in itself 
more ignominious than the guillotine or the gibbet — 
for why should men do such things with a gibbet if all 
is imaginary? And he must explain all those coins, 
and medals, and memorials which crowd palaces, and 



SIXTEENTH LETTER. 201 

cabinets, and churches, and private dwellings, and 
which are found beneath decayed and ruined cities, on 
the supposition that all these are based on falsehood, 
and that in all history there has been nothing to cor- 
respond to them or to suggest them. 

MUST FIND A REASON FOR THE EXISTENCE AND 
INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH. 

Nor, only this — the infidel must explain the ex- 
istence and influence of the Christian Church. The 
followers of Jesus, who constitute this society, are 
widely separated from each other by social position, by 
country and race and culture, by all their habits of 
outward life and inward thought. The outward form 
given to the worship in which their faith finds expres- 
sion and to the organization in which they are com- 
bined for purposes of mutual fellowship and of action 
on the world have differed and do differ very widely ; 
but they agree in this, that they acknowledge one 
Father in Heaven, and live the life which they now 
live in the flesh by faith in the Son of God, who loved 
them and gave Himself for them, and are animated 
by one Spirit flowing forth from Him to form His like- 
ness in them, and continue patiently in well-doing 
for His sake, serving their generation in doing or 
suffering according to God's will. 

This society has had its Thorntons, and Wilberforce, 
and Whitfield, and Calvin, and Fletcher, and Luther, 
and Zwingle, and Howard, and Butler; its Ken, Eve- 
lyn, Baxter, Howe, Usher, Hammond, Hooker and the 
martyrs of the Reformation ; its Chalmers, Martyn, 
Edwards, Brainerd, Bunyan, McCheyne, Felix Neff, 
Oberlin, Eugenie de Guerin, Lacordaire and Besson ; 



202 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

its Fenelon, Antoine Court, Philip de Mornay, Thomas 
a Kempis, Savanarola, St. Francis ; its Bernard, Augus- 
tine, Chrysostom and Basil, and many scarcely less 
illustrious for their piety in other branches of Christ's 
Church.. True, humble, devoted, exemplary followers 
of Jesus are, indeed, found in every age and in every 
community in which the Gospel is preached. They 
are found sometimes in palaces, sometimes among 
philosophers and men of science, far more often among 
the lowly, oftenest of all among the suffering. Any 
one almost can think of a mother, a father, a sister, or 
elder brother, who has watched like a guardian angel 
for his life — gone, perhaps, now where all care and 
suffering, even anxiety for him, is swallowed up in 
the full sunshine of God's own presence. We can 
recollect how, in the presence of such persons, sin 
became hateful, and doubt became almost impossible. 

Now, all such persons tell us that the truth of what 
they believe concerning Christ is assured to them by 
an inward experience, which can scarcely be more de- 
ceptive than their consciousness of existence. Christi- 
anity claims to be a practical thing, a remedy for a 
great evil, the power of a new life to any one receiving 
it into his heart, and these witnesses tell us simply 
that they have tried the remedy and it has fulfilled its 
promise. They assure us that they feel the power of 
the new life within them, and they show it in its ap- 
propriate action. 

What, then, is the source of this life which has thus 
shown itself all along the ages ? What has produced 
the likeness of these true and faithful servants of the 
One Lord to Him and to each other ? What is the 
mysterious power which has given cohesion and vitality 



SIXTEENTH LETTER. 203 

to the Christian Church through all the long centuries 
of persecution that have rolled away, and that pre- 
serves it in its beauty and beneficence and glory until 
this day ? These are questions that the infidel is 
bound to answer if any respect at all is to be paid to 
his opinion. Can he do it ? He might as well under- 
take to prove that truth and falsehood are identical, or 
that an effect does not require an adequate cause. 
Astronomy supplies an illustration. If the motion of 
nebulse and worlds be once granted, then our physical 
science may find some possible solution ior the succeed- 
ing phenomena of the solar system ; but the difficulty 
is to account for that first impulse of the nebulous 
mass, for the originating motion of the order of the 
spheres. Once admit an original Divine impulse, a 
new formative, constructive power sent from without 
into human history, in the person of Jesus Christ, and 
then the existence, spread and growth of Christianity 
become an intelligible historical study ; but it is im- 
possible to find in history a natural cause for a super- 
natural movement, a material source for a spiritual 
life. 

Such, Sir, are a few of the difficulties which a re- 
jecter of Christianity has to surmount ; a few of the 
paradoxes which he has to receive ; and surely of such 
an one it may be truthfully said : " O infidel, great is 
thy faith ! " " 

I cannot but add to this letter what I believe to be 
the real, radical and ruling cause of infidelity. 

BAD CHARACTER OF INFIDELS. 

John, Earl of Rochester, an infidel to whom, though 
of depraved morals, his friends often pointed as a star 



204 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

of no common brilliancy, in his later days, wishing to 
undo the evil he had done by his profane scoffs against 
religion, often laid his hand upon the Bible and de- 
clared : " a bad heart is the great objection against this 
holy Book" 

Here is the real secret of opposition to the Word of 
God, as is proved by the principles and practice of 
those who have assailed it. Woolston was a gross 
blasphemer. Blount solicited his sister-in-law to marry 
him, and being refused, shot himself. Tirtdal was 
originally a Protestant, then turned Papist, then Prot- 
estant again, merely to suit the times, and was, at the 
same period, infamous for vice in general and the total 
want of principle. Hobbes wrote his " Leviathan " to 
serve the cause of Charles I., but finding him fail of 
success, he turned it to the defence of Cromwell, and 
made a merit of this fact to the usurper, as Hobbes 
himself unblushingly declared to Lord Clarendon. 
Hume was revengeful, vain, and advocated suicide and 
adultery. Morgan had no regard for truth, as is evi- 
dent from his numerous falsifications of Scripture, as 
well as from the vile hypocrisy of professing himself a 
Christian in those very writings in which he labors to 
destroy Christianity. Bolingbroke was a rake and a 
flagitious politician. Voltaire, in a letter now in exist- 
ence, requested his friend D'Alembert to tell for him 
a direct and palpable lie by denying that he was the 
author of the Philosophical Dictionary. D'Alembert in 
his answer informed him that he had told the lie. Vol- 
taire has indeed expressed his own moral character per- 
fectly in the following words : li Mons. Abbe, I must be 
read, no matter whether I am believed or not." He also 
solemnly professed to believe the Roman Catholic reli- 



SIXTEENTH LETTER. 205 

gion, also at the same time he elsewhere professed to 
doubt the existence of God. Paine was the slave of 
low and degrading habits, and Rousseau an abandoned 
sensualist, and guilty of the basest actions, which he 
scruples not to state and palliate. 

Such is the record of many prominent infidels, and 
that their opposition to the Bible is traceable to the de- 
pravity of their hearts rather than to the conviction 
of their intellects is evident from the eulogies — some 
of which we have already noticed — which they felt 
constrained to pronounce on the very volume they 
sought to destroy. 

GOOD CHARACTER OF THE FRIENDS OF THE BIBLE. 

Turning now to the avowed friends of the Bible, 
how marked the contrast ! We find them to be of an 
entirely different character from that of its enemies. 
Wherever we find a man of splendid and surpassing 
goodness we are sure to find a believer in Christ whom 
all the vices hate and persecute. Wherever we find 
even a devout Theist we are sure to find him as devout 
a Christian. Wherever we find even an habitually 
praying person we are sure to find him kneeling by the 
side of a Bible. Everywhere those who love the Word 
of God are upright and useful men, whilst those who 
reject it are the blots and the bane of society. 

The artless argument in this direction used by the 
African prince, who visited England many years ago, 
is worthy of serious consideration. The gentleman to 
whose care he was intrusted took great pains to con- 
vince him that the Bible was the Word of God, and 
he received it as such, with great reverence and sim- 
plicity. His reasoning in the case was this — " When 



206 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

I found all good men minding the Bible, and calling 
it the Word of God, and all bad men disregarding it, 
I then was sure that the Bible must be what good men 
called it, the Word of God." 



SEVENTEENTH LETTER. 

Sir: In asking your attention to the progress of 
Christianity, I need only remind you that it arose in 
an enlightened and sceptical age, but among a despised 
and narrow-minded people. It earned hatred and per- 
secution at home by its liberal genius and opposition 
to the national prejudices; it earned contempt abroad 
by its connection with the country where it was born, 
but which sought to strangle it in its birth. 

And yet, notwithstanding the fierce resistance it had 
to encounter, the Gospel grew, and at length made its 
influence widely felt. Its noble philosophy, notwith- 
standing the feebleness of the instruments employed, 
and its opposition to the prejudices and passions of all 
classes, settled itself in the conviction of the loftiest 
intellects, while the voice of mercy which it uttered, 
the love of mercy which it proclaimed, spread glad- 
ness and hope through myriads of despairing men. Its 
morals checked the progress of social corruption, its 
benevolence set the captive at liberty, and gave protec- 
tion to the oppressed. Its manifested immortality con- 
trolled one world by the revealed solemnities of an- 
other. Paganism fell prostrate before it, like the Dagon 
of Philistia, and lay broken and mutilated on the very 
thresholds of the temples where it had been adored. 
The account given in the book of Acts of the multi- 
tude of early converts, of the dispersion of the Chris- 

(207) 



208 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

tians, and of the success of Paul's labors, is confirmed 
by the most unexceptionable testimony. 

We learn from Tacitus that in the year of our Lord 
63, thirty years after His death, there was an immense 
multitude of Christians in Rome. From the capital 
of the world the communication was easy through all 
the parts of the Roman empire, and no country then 
discovered was too distant to hear the Gospel. Ac- 
cordingly it is generally agreed that before the de- 
struction of Jerusalem, Scythia on the north, India on 
the east, Gaul and Egypt on the west, and Ethiopia 
on the south, had received the doctrine of Christ. 
And Britain, which was then regarded as the extremity 
of the earth, being frequently visited during that 
period by Roman emperors or their generals, there is 
no improbability in what is affirmed by Christian his- 
torians, that the Gospel was preached in the capital of 
that island thirty years after the death of our Saviour. 
In the book of Revelation it appears from the epistles 
which John was commanded to write to the ministers 
of the Churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thy- 
atyra, Sard is, Philadelphia and Laodicea, that there 
were, during the life of that apostle, seven regular 
churches in Asia Minor. As to the progress of our 
religion subsequent to this period, w r e derive no light 
from the books of the New Testament, because there 
is none of them which we certainly know to be of a 
later date than the destruction of Jerusalem, but there 
are other authentic proofs of its wide and rapid 
spread. 

The younger Pliny, proconsul of Bithynia, writes in 
the end of the first century to the Emperor Trajan, 
asking directions as to his conduct with regard to the 



SEVENTEENTH LETTER. 209 

Christians. He represents that many of every age 
and rank were called to account for bearing the Chris- 
tian name; that the contagion of "that superstition," 
as he called it, had spread not only through the cities, 
but through the villages and fields; that the temples 
had been deserted, and the usual sacrifices neglected. 
There are extant two apologies for Christianity, written 
by Justin Martyr, about the middle of the second cen- 
tury, and one by Tertullian before the end of it. These 
apologies, which were public papers addressed to the 
Emperor and the Roman magistrates, mention with 
triumph the multitude of Christians. And there is a 
work of Justin Martyr, entitled "A Dialogue with 
Trypho the Jew," published about the year 146, in 
which he thus speaks: "There is no nation, whether 
of Barbarians or Greeks, whether they live in wagons 
or tents, amongst whom prayers are not made to the 
Father and Creator of all through the name of the 
crucified Jesus." 

The Gospel in four centuries had pervaded the civ- 
ilized world ; it had mounted the thrones of the 
Caesars; it had spread beyond the limits of their sway, 
and had made inroads upon barbarian nations whom 
their eagles had never visited; it had gathered all 
genius and all learning into itself, and made the litera- 
ture of the world its own; it survived the inundation 
of the barbarian tribes, and conquered the world once 
more by converting its conquerors to the faith ; it sur- 
vived an age of barbarism ; it survived the restoration 
of letters; it survived an age of free inquiry and scep- 
ticism, and has long stood its ground in the field of 
argument, and commanded the intelligent assent of the 
greatest minds that ever were. 
14 



210 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

Thus did the truth which had descended from 
heaven grow like a tree, shooting up under the fruc- 
tifying influences which distilled and beamed upon it. 
The church expanded and strengthened under the 
living presence of its Lord, and it gradually and 
steadily increased under the holy walk of those who 
had embraced its faith, their constancy under suffering, 
the blood of their martyrs, and the dispersion of its 
harassed and persecuted members, who, having no 
other means to confound the fleshly wisdom of the 
world, were enabled to do this by their holy living and 
triumphant dying. And thus has the Gospel con- 
tinued to grow, until it is at present professed through- 
out the most civilized and enlightened part of the 
world, and it has been carried in the progress of 
modern discoveries and conquests to the remotest quar- 
ters of the globe, exhibiting in the life of Jesus a pic- 
ture, varied and minute, of the perfect human united 
with the divine, in which the mind of man has not 
been able to find a deficiency or detect a blemish — a 
picture copied from no model and rivalled by no copy 
— it has accommodated itself to every clime, it has re- 
tained through every change a salient spring of life, 
which enables it to throw oif corruption and repay 
decay, and renew its youth, amid outward hostility 
and inward division. In this wonderful progress and 
power who can fail to see the evidence of its divine 
origin ? 



EIGHTEENTH LETTER. 

Sir : Socrates has defined true philosophy to be 
" the study of death." That polished scholar, Addison, 
declared that " in all history there is nothing so in- 
structive as a faithful account of the manner in which 
eminent men have met that trying hour when they 
passed from time into eternity." Certainly no other 
occasion is more impressive, nor is there any in which 
the true character is so likely to be developed. The 
utterances that come to us from the brink of the grave 
fall on the ear like an echo from the throne of eternity 
itself. However long and closely the veil of deceit 
may have been worn, we expect to find it there laid 
aside, for the man must be so far debased by his wicked- 
ness that little of humanity can yet belong to him who 
is not awed into sincerity and honesty when about to 
appear in the presence of that omniscient Judge who 
" searches the heart and tries the reins, even to give 
every man according to his ways, and according to the 
fruit of his doings." Death is emphatically " the 
honest hour." It not only seals character, but also 
reveals it. 

HAPPY DEATH OF CHRISTIANS. 
How strongly, Sir, does the happy death of Chris- 
tians, when viewed in contrast with the miserable end 
of sceptics and scoffers, attest the divine origin and the 
supreme excellence of the Bible ! 

(211) 



212 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

PAUL. 
When Paul stood on the shore of eternity his trium- 
phant language was, "I am now ready to be offered, 
and the time of my departure is at hand. I have 
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have 
kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up for me a 
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, tha righteous 
Judge, will give me at that day." 

BEDE. 

In his last hour the venerable Bede exclaimed' — "I 
desire to depart and be with Christ. I desire to see 
Christ, my King, in His beauty, as He is, and where 
He is. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to 
the Holy Ghost," and then expired with the doxology 
still lingering on his lips. 

LUTHER. 

The last words Luther was heard to utter were, 
"Into thy hands I commend my spirit. Thou hast 
redeemed me, O Lord God of truth." 

MELANCTHON. 

Melancthon, when about to die, w T as asked by his 
friends if he wanted anything, and he replied, " I want 
nothing, and I am looking for nothing but Heaven," 
and then gently fell asleep in Christ. 

JOHN KNOX. 

When John Knox was near his last breath, a friend 
who had prayed with him, having asked whether he 
had heard what was said, " Would to God," was his 
reply, " that you had all heard those words with such 



EIGHTEENTH LETTER. 213 

an ear and heart as I ! " Then, looking heavenward, 
he said, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," and, without 
a struggle, entered into the joy of his Lord. 

ADDISON. 

Addison's reply to a young nobleman, who requested 
him to impart his last injunctions, was, "I have sent 
for you that you may see how a Christian can die." 

HALYBURTON. 

Haly burton, when dying, thus addressed those around 
him — " I dare, in the mercy of God, and by the power 
of His grace, look death in the face in its most ghastly 
shape, and hope to have in a little time the victory 
over it. Glory, glory to him ! O what of God do I 
see ! I have never seen anything like it ! The begin- 
ning and end of religion are wonderfully sweet! I 
long for his salvation, I bless his name ! I have found 
him ! I am taken up in blessing him ! I am dying : 
rejoicing in the Lord." 

DR. DODDRIDGE. 

"I am full of confidence," said Dr. Doddridge, 
" there is a hope set before me ; I have fled, I still fly 
for refuge to that hope. In Him I trust. In Him I 
have strong consolation, and shall assuredly be ac- 
cepted in the Beloved of my soul." 

HERVEY. 

" Do not think," declared Mr. Hervey, " that I am 
afraid to die ! I assure you I am not. I know what 
my Saviour hath done for me, and I want to be gone." 
A little before his death he said, — " The great conflict 
is over ! Now all is done ! " 



214 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

TOPLADY. 

"It -will not be long," exclaimed Mr. Toplady, 
"before God takes me, for no mortal man can live 
(bursting into tears) after the glories which God has 
manifested to my soul." 

WESLEY. 

The Rev. John Wesley, attempting to say something 
to those around his bedside which they could not un- 
derstand, paused a little, and then with all the remain- 
ing strength he had, said in a holy triumph, " The best 
of all is, God is with us." 

DR. SCOTT. 
The morning of the day he died, Dr. Thomas Scott, 
the eminent commentator, said, — "This is heaven be- 
gun. I have done with darkness forever — -forever. 
Satan is vanquished. Nothing remains but salvation 
with eternal glory — eternal glory" 

DR. PAYSON. 

To some young men, whom Dr. Payson invited to 
visit him, he observed : — " Death comes every night and 
stands by my bedside in the form of terrible convul- 
sions, every one of which threatens to separate the soul 
from the body. These continue to grow worse and 
worse, until every bone is almost dissolved with pain, 
leaving me with the certainty that I shall have it all 
to endure again the next night. Yet, while my body 
is thus tortured, the soul is perfectly, perfectly happy 
and peaceful — more happy than I can possibly express 
to you. I lie here and feel these convulsions extending 
higher and higher, without the least uneasiness, but my 
soul is filled with joy unspeakable. I seem to revive 



EIGHTEENTH LETTER. 215 

iu a flood of glory which God pours down upon me. 
And I know, I know that my happiness is but begun; 
I cannot doubt that it will last forever. And now, is 
all this a delusion ? Is it a delusion which can fill the 
soul to overflowing with joy in such circumstances? 
If so, it is surely a delusion better than any reality; 
but no, it is not a delusion, I feel that it is not. I do 
not merely know that I shall enjoy all this; I enjoy it 
now." 

At another time, when his body was racked with in- 
conceivable suffering, and his cheeks pale and sunken 
with disease, he exclaimed like a warrior returning 
from the field of triumph, "The battle's fought! the 
battle's fought! and the victory is won! the victory 
is won forever! I am going to bathe in an ocean 
of purity, and benevolence, and happiness to all eter- 
nity ! " At another time he exclaimed, " The celestial 
city is full in view — its glories beam upon me — its 
breezes fan me — its odors are wafted to me — its music 
strikes upon my ear, and its spirit breathes into my 
heart ; nothing separates me from it but the river of 
death, which now appears as a narrow rill, which may 
be crossed at a single step, whenever God shall give 
permission." 

DR. FINLEY. 

When Dr. Samuel Finley, President of Princeton 
College, lay upon his death-bed, the Rev. Elihu 
Spencer called to see him, and said, " I have come, 
dear sir, to see you confirm by facts the Gospel you 
have been preaching: pray, sir, how do you feel?" 
To which he replied, "Full of triumph. I triumph 
through Christ. Nothing slips my wings but the 
thoughts of my dissolution being prolonged. O, that 



216 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

it were to-night! my very soul thirsts for eternal 
rest ! " 

HALL AND EVARTS. 

Gordon Hall, expiring in the verandah of a heathen 
temple, far away from his native land, exclaimed, 
"Glory to thee, O God!" and repeated the words 
again and again till his breath ceased ; and the calm 
and sober-minded Evarts burst forth at his death in 
the exclamation, " Wonderful, wonderful glory ! We 
cannot comprehend such wonderful glory ! I will 
praise him ! I will praise him \" 

" Go, child of darkness, see a Christian die ! 
No horror pales his lips or dims his eye, 
No fiend-shaped phantoms of destruction start 
The hope religion pillows on his heart, 
When with a faltering hand he waves adieu 
To all who love so well and weep so true : 
Meek, as an infant to the mother's breast 
Turns, fondly longing for its wonted rest, 
He pants for where congenial spirits stray, 
Turns to his God, and sighs his soul away." 

WRETCHED DEATH OF INFIDELS. — HUME. 

The housekeeper of the infidel Hume, who was with 
him in his last moments, bore this testimony : " It is 
true, sir, that when Mr. Hume's friends were with him 
he was cheerful, and seemed quite unconcerned about 
his approaching fate; nay, frequently spoke to them 
of it in a playful and jocular way ; but when he was 
alone the scene was very different; he was anything 
but composed ; his mental agitation was so great as 
often to alarm me greatly. He struggled to appear 
composed, even before me ; but to one who attended his 
bedside for many days and nights, who witnessed his 



EIGHTEENTH LETTER. 217 

disturbed sleep and more disturbed wakings, who fre- 
quently heard his voluntary breathings of remorse and 
frightful startings, it was no difficult matter to deter- 
mine that all was not right within. This continued 
and increased until he became insensible. I hope I 
may never be called upon to witness a similar scene.". 

TALLEYRAND. 

The famous Talleyrand, on the day before his death, 
wrote the humiliating confession: "Behold, eighty- 
three years have passed away ! What cares ! What 
agitations! What anxieties! What ill will ! What 
sad complications! and all without other results, except 
great fatigue of body and mind, a profound sentiment 
of discouragement for the future, and disgust for the 
past ! " 

VOLTAIRE. 
Voltaire in his last illness said to his physician, 
" Doctor, I will give you half of what I am worth if 
you will give me six months' life." The doctor an- 
swered, " Sir, you cannot live six weeks." Voltaire 
replied, "Then I shall go to hell, and you will go 
with me," and soon after expired. 

PAINE. 

Thomas Paine in his last illness would not be left 
alone night or day. He would call out during his 
paroxysms of distress, without intermission, "O Lord, 
help me! God help me ! Jesus Christ, help me! O 
Lord, help me," etc. Dr. Man ley put the following 
questions to him : " Mr. Paine, what must we think of 
your present conduct? Whv do you call upon Jesus 
Christ to help you ? Do you believe that he can help 



218 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

you? Do ) r ou believe in the divinity of Jesus 
Christ?" After a pause of some minutes, he an- 
swered, " I have no wish to believe on that subject." 

NEWPORT. 

Sir Francis Newport, who had received an early reli- 
gious training, but after he had arrived at mature years 
fell into bad company and became an infidel, on his 
death-bed exclaimed, "Whence this war in my heart? 
What argument is there now to assist me against 
matter of fact? Do I assert that there is no hell while 
I feel one in my own bosom ? Am I certain that there 
is no after retribution when I feel a present judgment? 
Do I affirm my soul to be as mortal as my body when 
this languishes and that is vigorous as ever? O that 
any one could restore to me my ancient guard of piety 
and innocence! Wretch that I am, whither shall I 
fly from this heart? What will become of me?" 

HOBBES. 

The last sensible words that the atheist ITobbcs ut- 
tered were, " I shall be glad to find a hole to creep out 
of the world." 

" Lo, there, in yonder fancy-haunted room, 
What muttered curses tremble through the gloom ; 
When pale, and, shivering, and bedewed with fear, 
The dying sceptic felt his hour draw near; 
From his parched tongue no meek hosanna fell, 
No bright hope kindled ut his faint farewell. 
As the last throes of deatli convulsed his cheek, 
He gnashed and scowled and raised a hideous shriek, 
Rounded his eyes into a ghastly glare, 
Locked his white lips, and all was mute despair." 



NINETEENTH LETTER. 

Sir: Lord Lyttleton has said and ably demonstrated, 
"that the conversion and apostleship of Paul alone, 
duly considered, is of itself a demonstration sufficient 
to prove Christianity a divine revelation." I do not 
understand this eminent scholar as affirming that 
Christianity depends on this argument. Nor is this 
the case. Were the conversion of Paul nothing but a 
mere myth, were his apostleship an imposture, Christi- 
anity would still be divine. The biography of Christ 
is Christianity, and the truth of that biography is sup- 
ported by its own sublime nature, by the voice of all 
history, by its fitness to the spiritual constitution and 
exigencies of man, and by the supernatural flood of 
influence it has poured into the ages. Still, as Paul's 
conversion is one of the great corroborative proofs of 
the Christian system, I ask for it your special and seri- 
ous consideration. 

What was Paul before the great change which he 
experienced on his way to Damascus? Both on the 
side of his father and mother, his extraction was purely 
Jewish, and his religious education had been exclusively 
of this character. The nation to which he belonged 
were proudly mindful of their distinctions, studied 
tneir law with active investigation, and defended it 
with ardent zeal. There was, too, everything in Chris- 
tianity and its Founder to excite and strengthen their 

(210) 



220 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

prejudices as a degenerate people. Jesus of Nazareth, 
instead of appearing according to their expectation of 
the Messiah, as a great and victorious prince, invested 
with secular pomp and glory, to break asunder the 
Roman yoke, and raise the nation from which He 
sprang to the pinnacle of human greatness, had avowed 
His mission to be the establishment of a spiritual 
kingdom, had lived in the most abject poverty and 
died in the deepest ignominy. 

Paul was a Pharisee. Early had he identified him- 
self with this division of his countrymen, and highly 
was he esteemed among them for the zeal, precision, 
and ability, as well as uncompromising resolution with 
which he adhered to the rules, ordinances, and doc- 
trines of the most rigid of the sect. With them he 
courageously contended for his own imaginary excel- 
lencies, for the abrogated rites and ceremonies of the 
Mosaic economy, and for legal performances as entirely 
sufficient for salvation. 

Paul was a man of worldly ambition. With his 
powerful talents, finished education, the popularity he 
had secured by his outward sanctimoniousness, his un- 
tiring energy, and the influence of distinguished con- 
nections, he needed not to be told that the fairest 
opportunity for self-advancement was opened up before 
him. Nor was he indisposed to appreciate the advan- 
tages of this kind which he enjoyed. This we learn 
from his manner of speaking of them after their re- 
nunciation : " What things were gain to me, those I 
counted loss for Christ." 

Paul was a violent jjersecutor of the followers of Jesus. 
He was a man characterized by such ardor of tempera- 
ment, hardihood of nerve, and passion of character, 



NINETEENTH LETTER. 221 

that it was impossible for him to embark in any enter- 
prise without allowing it to absorb and concentrate the 
strength of all his powers. The people of God were 
like a scattered and defenceless flock, and he was like a 
beast of prey ready to devour them. He tells us that, 
many of them he had shut up in prison, and that when 
they were put to death he gave his voice against them, 
and that he punished them oft in every synagogue, 
and compelled them to blaspheme that worthy name 
by which they were called, and that he was so exceed- 
ingly mad against them that he persecuted them even 
to strange cities. And now, when on another journey 
of iniquity to Damascus, he is filled with wrath. He 
is rejoicing with hellish rapture in the thoughts of his 
expected success. He is breathing out threatening and 
slaughter. Having drawn near to the place of his 
destination, he is savagely exulting at the thought of 
being so near his prey. His heart is hot within him. 
It burns with rancor and cruelty. His breath is flame. 
The volcano of his breast is heaving and swelling, and 
pouring out its streams of fire on every side. Yet, 
just in this state of mind — a state the most unfavor- 
able of all others to the reception of Christianity — a 
voice from heaven reaches his ear, a more powerful 
voice reaches his heart, he feels, as by the stroke of 
lightning, the force of evidence and the power of truth, 
and all the sentiments of astonishment, conviction, 
penitence, deep humiliation, instant resolution, un- 
daunted decision, and unreserved consecration are com- 
bined in his memorable prayer, "Lord, what wilt thou 
have me to do?" 

Now, Sir, what was Paul's history after this crisis in 
bis career ? Never was there a more wonderful revul- 



222 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

sion of judgment — never a more thorough renovation 
of character. The "feet which had been swift to shed 
blood " are consecrated to bear the Gospel through the 
vast extent of the Roman empire. We find this 
" prisoner of the Lord " planting churches, strength- 
ening those already planted, preaching in synagogues, 
and in all places of public resort, the faith which he 
once destroyed, visiting from house to house, writing 
epistles, reasoning with the learned, grappling with the 
enemies of civil liberty, and asserting the sacred rights 
of freedom. Everywhere, whether at liberty or in 
bonds, amid the court of Areopagus or amongst the 
barbarians at Melita, we see one great object before 
him, giving animation to his motives, consistency to 
his character, and concentration to his efforts — that the 
word of the Lord might have free course and be glori- 
fied. As we trace his history we find him willing to 
be hurried from tribunal to tribunal, from province to 
province, sometimes before the Romans, sometimes be- 
fore the Jews, sometimes before the High Priest of the 
synagogue, and sometimes before the procurator of 
Csesar — willing to hunger and thirst, be naked, and be 
buffeted, have no certain dwelling-place, labor with 
his hands, be reviled, defamed, imprisoned, and beaten 
with rods, willing to be in perils of waters, of robbers, 
in perils by his own countrymen, by the heathen, in the 
city, in the wilderness, among false brethren, to be in 
weariness and painfulness, in watchings and fastings 
often — in one word, willing to spend his days in such a 
way that he belonged to the number of those who, if 
they had not had hope beyond this life, had been of al 
men most miserable, and ready, when thoce days were 
to end, to give himself up a willing martyr, saying, "I 



NINETEENTH LETTER. 223 

am now ready to be offered, and the time of my de- 
parture is at hand." 

How, then, Sir, is this great and glorious change to 
be accounted for? What occasioned it? " Was it a 
trick played upon the persecutor by those he came to 
harass? Was it the weak fancy of a fanatic? Or 
was it a tale devised to cover the resolution previously 
taken of going over to the persecuted party ? None 
of these suppositions will account for the circumstances. 
W r e cannot doubt the fact. For there are letters ex- 
tant by the man himself, the authenticity of which not 
even the most determined sceptic can object to, in 
which he refers to the change produced in him. It 
could not be with the expectation of worldly advan- 
tage. For, as we have already seen, the followers of 
Christ were as vet a small and uninfluential body, un- 
able to protect themselves from any outrage that bigotry 
and malice might plan against them. And Saul, as 
we have also seen, was already in high favor with the 
ruling party in Church and State, all the rewards 
which usually allure ambitious men being most surely 
in his grasp by pursuing his present career. And he 
was not an unstable man. Had he through any pique 
deserted the chief priests, we should assuredly have 
found him vacillating and changing sides on subsequent 
occasions. It is useless to say that he was deceived by 
a trick. And to imagine that the vision was the fig- 
ment of his own brain, or that he magnified some or- 
dinary natural phenomenon into a miraculous interpo- 
sition, would be to adopt a theory which a child might 
refute. The character of Paul, as described in the 
Acts, and to be gathered from his own writings, utterly 
destroys such a notion. The idea, that he who an- 



224 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

swered for himself before. Agrippa, and penned the 
Epistle to the Romans, was but a dreamy enthusiast, is 
perfectly preposterous. There is but one sound con- 
elusion, then. It is that by the divine voice Saul was 
taught to recognize in Jesus of Nazareth that Messiah 
for whom the aucient seers had taught the nation to 
look forward." 

And this conversion, we repeat, is one of those sig- 
nal miracles by which our cherished faith has been 
forever ratified. It is a fact which comes home to the 
bosoms of men, represses the confidence of infidelity, 
and breaks the slumbers of indifference. It is an 
event which, as strongly as any other, vouches for 
Christianity and enables us to say, " Here is the finger 
of God." It shows us, if we are willing to see it, that 
our religion is from above, that it is not a system of 
delusion, but that it is the truth, the wisdom and the 
power of God unto salvation. It exhibits to us in 
Paul, one who was neither deceived in what he be- 
lieved, nor a deceiver in what he professed and preached 
— an argument which all can understand, and which 
none but a mind swayed by a wicked heart can deny. 



TWENTIETH LETTER. 

Sir : In my first letter to you I remarked that as 
far as a revelation from God is concerned, we are shut 
up to "the Bible or nothing." This is a truth which 
it is well for every man seriously to weigh. 

HINDOO SCRIPTURES. 

Suppose Christianity were set aside, what would be 
its substitute? Shall it be the religion of the Hindoo 
Scriptures? To say nothing of their local and partial 
nature, it is, as every scholar knows, becoming more 
and more evident that the only theological dogmas of 
any religious power, or even philosophical interest, 
which these scriptures contain, are but the almost de- 
faced remains of ideas belonging to the old patriarchal 
revelation of the World-Deliverer, and which are 
brought out in all their sublimity in the Christian 
doctrine of the Incarnation. In all other respects, in 
their monstrous mythology, in their mind-destroying 
pantheism, above all, in their revolting impurity, they 
are what the depraved Hindoo mind has made them, 
and what they, in their reaction, have made the 
present Hindoo race. 

BUDDHISM. 

Or shall Buddhism be the Bible's substitute? This 
system, as is well understood, is virtually a philosophic 
atheism. In it there is no God but intellect. The 
15 (225) 



226 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

Buddhist, in reality, worships nothing higher than his 
own soul, or the conception of that soul, developed 
under more propitious circumstances than his indi- 
vidual life has supplied. And the moral abominations 
and monstrous forms of human society, which have 
grown up beneath the shelter of his creed and his 
worship, are too well known to require mention. 

THE KORAN. 

It is only necessary to add that the idea of the Koran 
being substituted for the Bible is simply preposterous. 
Not to notice the extravagances and follies which it 
contains, it is at variance in many parts with the estab- 
lished facts of science, and in many other parts with 
just moral sentiments. Besides, in all its really im- 
portant aspects, it is a copy from Judaism, or from 
Christianity, or from both. None acquainted with 
the Jewish and Christian Scriptures — the latter and 
especially the former, much more ancient than the 
Koran — can doubt this fact for a moment. It is from 
the Koran's oft-asserted claim to be the religion of 
Abraham, " in whom all the families of the earth 
were to be blessed," that it has its real power, its wide- 
spread, long-enduring hold in so many parts of the 
older continents. But it would be futile to dwell at 
length on this subject. The Koran abounds with ab- 
surdities, bombast, unmeaning images, and low sen- 
suality. It abounds in repetitions and contradictions. 
Probably none but a Mahometan would challenge any 
comparison between the Koran and the Bible. The 
one is the genuine revelation of the true God in Christ ; 
the other is a mock revelation, without Christ and 
without atonement. The one is historical, and em- 



TWENTIETH LETTER. 227 

bodies the noblest aspirations of the human race in all 
ages to the final consummation ; the other begins and 
stops with Mohammed. The one combines endless 
variety with unity, universal applicability with local 
adaptation ; the other is uniform and monotonous, con- 
fined to one country, one state of society, and one class 
of minds. The one is the book of the world, and is 
constantly travelling to the ends of the earth, carrying 
spiritual food to all classes of the people; the other stays 
at home, and is insipid to all who have once fully 
tasted the true Word of the living God. " The Koran," 
says Gibbon, " is an endless, incoherent rhapsody of 
fable and precept and declamations, which seldom ex- 
cites a sentiment or idea, which sometimes crawls in 
the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds." Reiske 
denounces it as the most absurd book, and a scourge 
to a reader of sound common sense. 

I notice, Sir, let me incidentally remark, that in one 
of your lectures you pushed forward the success of 
Mohammed as a parallel to that of Christianity. But 
did you not know at the very time that there is a per- 
fect contrast between the two, both as to the means 
employed, and the effect produced ? The means of the 
Arabian impostor were conquest and compulsion, the 
effect was to legalize and sanctify, so to speak, the 
natural passions of men for plunder and sensual grati- 
fication; and it surely argues either a very frail judg- 
ment, or a criminal disposition to object, that a contrast 
so marked should have been alleged by you to be a cor- 
respondence. Men were persuaded, when they were 
not forced, to join the ranks of Mohammed by the hope 
of plunder, and a present and future life of brutal 
gratification. Men were persuaded to join the Apostles 



228 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

by the evidence of truth, and by the hope of future 
spiritual blessings, but with the certainty of present 
disgrace and suffering. 

NATURAL RELIGION. 

But assuming, as well might be assumed, that no 
man of ordinary intelligence would, on giving up the 
Bible, think for one moment of supplying its place with 
the Hindoo or Persian or Arabian or any other Scrip- 
tures, might he not supply it with Natural Religion ? 
Might he not by the mere light of Nature hold fast to 
God, to His government, to our responsibility to Him, 
and to the reality of moral distinctions? There can 
be but one answer to this question. " The same prin- 
ciples of criticism and modes of reasoning which he 
has allowed to destroy his confidence in the Bible are 
equally good against the most elementary doctrines of 
the religion of Nature. It has long been seen that 
the leading objections against the Bible apply with 
equal force against the constitution and course of Na- 
ture, as the work of God. And it is easy to see that 
the whole way of dealing that puts away the Bible is 
just as pertinent against even the common principles 
of morality. With it one could as well disprove the 
guilt of lying and stealing and murder. That axe will 
cut down anything we please. It is impossible to deny 
that any one who. allows objecting and cavilling against 
the Scriptures, to destroy his Christianity, is unable 
logically to save from its devouring edge the simplest 
teaching of Natural Religion. It strikes at the roots 
of all religious faith." 

Besides, Sir, "Natural Religion is uncertain in its 
teachings. " The first English deists," says Dr. Archi- 



TWENTIETH LETTER. 229 

bald Alexander, "extolled Natural Religion to the 
skies, as a system which contained all that man needed 
to know, and as being simple and intelligible to the 
meanest capacity. But, strange to tell, scarcely any 
two of them are agreed what Natural Religion is, and 
the same discordance has existed among their succes- 
sors. They are not agreed even in those points which 
are most essential in religion, and most necessary to 
be settled before any religious worship can be instituted. 
They differ on such points as these — whether there is 
any intrinsic difference between right and wrong, 
whether God pays any regard to the affairs of men, 
whether the soul is immortal, whether prayer is proper 
and useful, and whether any external rites of worship 
are necessary. 

"Again, if deism be the true religion, why has piety 
never flourished among its professors ? why have they 
not been the most zealous and consistent worshippers 
of God ? Does not truth promote piety ? and will it 
not ever be the case that they who hold the truth will 
love God most ardently, and serve him most faith- 
fully? But what is the fact in regard to this class of 
men? Have they ever been distinguished for their 
spirit of devotion ? have they produced numerous in- 
stances of exemplary piety ? It is so much the reverse, 
that even the asking such reasonable questions has the 
appearance of ridicule. And when people hear the 
word ' pious deist/ they have the same sort of feeling 
as when mention is made of an honest thief, or a sober 
drunkard." 

The question, then, to be settled is, not whether we 
shall have Christianity, or some other religion, but, 
whether we shall have Christianity, or no religion. 



230 INFIDELITY REBUKED. 

Beyond a doubt, by the drift of modern discussion, we 
are being narrowed down to the choice — Revelation, 
or Atheisui — Revelation, or the giving up of all hope in 
a life beyond the grave. One would think that, in the 
light which history throws on this subject, the enemies 
of God would desist from their malignant effort to dis- 
prove His existence and government, even if they had 
respect alone to man's temporal happiness. Look at 
France, — when she threw off the restraints of religion, 
exalted a strumpet as the Goddess of Reason, and wrote 
on the gates of her cemeteries : " Death is an eternal 
sleep." The crimes perpetrated by that nation filled 
the world with horror, and the miseries it suffered 
changed all the histories of the preceding sufferings of 
mankind into idle tales. The kingdom appeared to 
be changed into one great prison, the inhabitants con- 
verted into felons, and the common doom of man com- 
muted, for the violence of the sword and the bayonet, 
the sinking boat and the guillotine. To contemplative 
men, it seemed for a season as if the knell of the whole 
nation was tolled, and the world summoned to its 
execution and its funeral. Within the short space of 
ten years, — years of debauchery, rapacity, fraud, and 
every evil work, — not less than three millions of hu- 
man beings are supposed to have perished in that 
single country by the influence of atheism. Were the 
world to adopt and be governed by the doctrines of 
France, what crimes would not men perpetrate ? what 
agonies would they not suffer ? 

And yet, notwithstanding this light from the past, 
there are to be found men willing to attempt the 
overthrow of the Bible, and the inculcation of 
atheism. " O my soul, come not thou into their 



TWENTIETH LETTER. 231 

secret ; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou 
united ! " 

" I'd rather be the wretch that scrawla 
Its idiot nonsense on the walls, 
The gallant bark of reason wreck'd, 
A poor quench'd ray of intellect, 
With slabber'd chin and ray less eye, 
And mind of mere inanity, 
Not quite a man, nor quite a brute, 
Than I would basely prostitute 
My powers to serve the cause of vice, 
To build some jewell'd edifice, 
So fair, so foul, — framed with such art, 
To please the eye and taint the heart, 
That he who has not power to shun, 
Comes, looks, and feels himself undone!" 

Wo unto the man who " sitteth in the seat of the 
scornful ! " Happy, thrice happy are they who seek 
to make the Bible the " light of their feet," and " a 
lamp unto their path," — who trust in its promises, and 
strive to obey its precepts. 

Let us, instead of hurling at this matchless volume 
the shafts of derision, which are sure to rebound and 
strike us with defeat and dismay, then doom us to ever- 
lasting sorrow and contempt, prize it and cherish it as 
the " unspeakable gift " of God to ignorant and erring 
man. And let us do all we can, by word and act, to 
disseminate its influence. Let us not fail to give it 
freedom, to give it utterance. Let us set it up on the 
pedestal where it will be seen by all people, unfolding 
there the copy of the book itself, that from early 
morning through the day the eyes of men may look up 
and greet it, and in the shades of evening and during 
the long night they may repose beneath it, while it 
still watches over and guards the civilization it has 



232 INFIDELITY KEBUKED. 

made, until that day shall dawn that shall be followed 
by no eve and no darkness, for the whole earth 
shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of 
the Lord. 



THE END. 






7W 



L1BR ARY OF 



CONGRESS 





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